A sound professional instinct reinforces the personal one. Whenever a soldier goes before a Medical Board it is soon clear that he wants to be thought either less fit than he is or more fit. The doctor's first impulse, as soon as he sees which way the man's wishes tend, is to lean towards the other. And this, in due measure, is just. We all understate or overstate symptoms to our own family doctors according to what we fear or desire. The doctor rightly tries to detect the disturbing force in the patient's mind, and to discount for it duly--just like "laying-off" for a side-wind in shooting. So now the president sees light again. The Board is now out to find the lance-sergeant a crock. "Hold out your wrist," says the senior member. The pulse is jealously felt. "Rotten!" the senior member says to the junior. Then, penetratingly, to the sergeant: "What's that cicatrix you've got on the back of your hand? Both hands! Show me here." Two spongy, purplish-red pads of new flesh are inspected. "Burns, scarcely healed!" says the president wrathfully. "Skin just the strength of wet tissue-paper! Man alive, you've a bracelet of ulcers all round your wrists. Never wash, eh?" When liquid fire flayed a man's hands to the sleeve, but not further, the skin was apt to break out, as he recovered, in small, deep boils about the frontier of the new skin and the old. The sergeant does not answer. He wants no capital punishment under the Army act. "Man's an absolute wreck," says the major. "Debility, wounds imperfectly healed, blood-poisoning likely. Not fit for the line for two months to come. P.B.--eh?" he turns to his junior. "That's what _I_ should say, sir," the junior concurs, in a tone of desperate independence. "Next man," says the major. Before the lance-sergeant has quite stalked to the door the major calls after him "Sergeant!" "Sir?" says the sergeant, furious and red but contained. "You're a damned good man, but it won't do," says the major. "Good luck to you!" Great are the forces of decent human relentment after a hearty let-out with the temper.