And then the auctioneer's clerk disappeared from the peaceful purlieus of Brixton and went out alone into an entirely new world, the like of which had never presented itself to his fancy, even in dreams. He became one of fifteen men whose home was a bell tent designed to give easy shelter to perhaps half that number. He began to spend his days in a routine of drill which, even to him with his gymnasium training, seemed most singularly tiresome and meaningless--at first. At the end of four weeks he returned home for a Saturday night and Sunday in the Brixton house; and he wore one stripe on the sleeve of his service jacket. To his intelligence there now was nothing in the whole intricate round of section, platoon, and company drill which was meaningless, however wearing it might sometimes seem. There was a tan on his cheeks, a clear brightness in his eyes, an alert swing in his carriage, and a surprisingly crisp ring in his voice which at once bewildered and delighted his womenfolk. He seemed not so much a new man as the man whom they had always loved and respected, in some subtle way magnified, developed, tuned up, brought to concert pitch. In November he was advised by his Company Commander to apply for a Commission. The officer badly wanted him for a Sergeant, but this officer had long since learned to place duty first and inclination a long way behind; and it was apparent to him that in this tall, alert Lance-Corporal of his, as in so many hundreds of other men in the ranks, there was the making of a good officer. Shortly before Christmas, 1914, he was gazetted a Second Lieutenant, and on New Year's Day he found himself walking across a parade ground to take his place in front of the platoon he subsequently led in France, after long months of arduous training in several different English camps. Three-quarters of a year passed between the day of this "Temporary Gentleman's" enlistment and his writing of the first of the letters now published over his pseudonym; and it may well be that all the previous years of his life put together produced no greater modification and development in the man than came to him in those nine months of training for the New Army. The training had its bookish side, for he was very thorough; but it was in the open air from dawn till dark, and ninety per cent. of it came to him in the process of training others.