Does the Navy demand as much of the sailor as the Army does of the soldier? A vexed question. The Army, comparing grimly its own casualty lists with the Navy's occasional roll sometimes imagines naturally enough that the sailor lives, as the old hymn has it, "on flowery beds of ease." As a whole there is no denying that living conditions are far better in the naval service, though much depends on the boat to which the sailor is assigned. A soldier in the trenches sleeps in his clothes, so does a sailor on a destroyer or a patrol boat, and I do not believe that I felt much more comfortable at the end of a long trip in an old destroyer during which the vessel rolled, pitched, tossed, careened, stood on her head, sat on her tail and buckled than I did after a week or so at the front. Certainly, there was little to choose between the overcrowded living quarters of the sailors and a decent "dug-out." True, the "Toto," alias greyback, alias "Cootie" or his occasional but less famous accomplice the "crimson rambler" does not infest a Navy ship. How many times have I not heard Army folk say in heartfelt tones, "Those Navy people can keep _clean_." But a truce to the Cootie. Much more has been made of him than he deserves. During the first six months of the war the creature was in evidence, but after the hostilities began to limit themselves to the trench swathe, and this localizing war made possible a stable system of hospitals, cantonments and baths, the Cootie became as rare as a day in June and to have such guest was an indication of abysmally bad luck or personal uncleanliness. Moreover, a little gasoline begged from a lorry driver and sprinkled on one's clothes confers unconditional immunity. Consider the crew of a submarine. They do not have to splash about in a gulley of smelly mud the consistency of thick soup, or wander down alleyways of red brown mud, so cheesy that it sticks to the boots till one no longer lifts feet from the ground, but shapeless, heavy, thrice cussed lumps of mire. No one has yet risen to sing the epic of the mud of France; yet 'tis the soul of the war. The submarine sailors are spared the mud, but they live in a sealed cylinder into which sunlight does not penetrate, live in the close atmosphere of a garage; they can not get exercise or change clothes. A submarine crew that has had a hard time of it looks quite as worn out as soldiers just out of battle and their colour is far worse. And if there is a more heroic service than this submarine patrol, I should like to know of it. And now the army in me rises to protest. "I admit," says the military voice, "that service on ships may be a confounded sight more disagreeable than I had imagined, but the sailor has a chance when he gets to port of changing his uniform, whilst a poor lad of a soldier must fight, eat, and sleep in the same old uniform, and must limit his changes to a change of underclothes."