So, too, in the army. Some old Regular sergeant-majors would sell every stripe that they could, but they would not sell a map to the enemy. Some of our higher commanders would use their A.D.C. rooms as funk-holes to shelter the healthy young nephew or son of their good friend the earl, or their distant cousin the marquis. But there were others. Sometimes a part of our Staff would almost seem to forget the war, and give its undivided mind to major struggles--its own intestine "strafes" and the more bitter war against uncomplaisant politicians at home. But presently it would remember, and work with a will. There was, again, an undeniable impulse abroad, among the "best people" of the old Army, to fall back towards G.H.Q. and its safety as soon as the first few months made it clear that this was to be none of our old gymkhana wars, but almost certainly lethal to regimental officers who stayed it out with their units. But this centripetal instinct, this "safety first" movement, though real, was moderate. Lists of headquarter formations might show an appreciable excess of names of some social distinction. But not an outrageous excess. Some peers and old baronets and their sons were still getting killed, by their own choice, along with the plebs to the very end of the war. Again, all through the war one could not deny that those who had chosen the safer part, or had it imposed upon them, absorbed a stout and peckish lion's share of the rewards for martial valour. And yet they did not absolutely withhold these meeds from officers and men who fought. The king of beasts being duly served, these hard-bitten jackals got some share, though not perhaps, for their numbers, a copious one. Some well-placed shirkers were filled with good things, but the brave were not sent utterly empty away. Guardsmen and cavalrymen, the least richly brained soldiers we had, kept to themselves the bulk of the distinguished jobs for which brain-work was needed; and yet the poor foot-soldier was not expressly taboo; quite a good billet would fall to him sometimes--Plumer commanded an army. As with the moral virtues, so with the mental. Brilliancy, genius, scientific imagination in any higher command would have caused almost a shock; a general with the demonic insight to see that he had got the enemy stiff at Arras in 1917 and at Cambrai the same autumn, might have seemed an _outré_ highbrow, almost unsafe. And yet the utter slacker was not countenanced, and the dunce had been known to be so dull that he was sent home as an empty by those unexacting chiefs. There was reason in everything, even in reason. IV