True, oh military spirit. Civilian, and thou, too, oh sailor, do you know what it is to be confined, to be wedded, without jest, "till death do us part" to _one_ suit. One faithful, persistent, necessary uniform and _one_ only. Two-thirds of the joy of permission is the pleasure of getting out of a dirty, stale, besweated uniform. Heaven bless, Heaven shower a Niagara of happiness on those kindly ladies who sent us supplies of socks and jerseys! Don't be content to knit Johnny socks and a sweater, keep on knitting him a number of them, and send them over at intervals. The dandies of a section used to leave extra clothes in villages behind the lines. Alas, sometimes, the group, after service "_aux tranchées_" was not marched back to the same village, and it was difficult to get permission to visit the other village, even were it near. Such expedients, however, are for luxurious times. Quite often there are no habitable villages for miles behind the lines, or else the civilian inhabitants have been ruthlessly warned away. In such circumstances there is no clean cache of clothes to be left behind in Madame's closet. But the sailor ... though he returns as grimy as a printers' devil and as bearded as a comic tramp, there is always a clean suit of "liberty blues" in his bag, and to-morrow, clad in the handsomest of all naval uniforms, he will be found ashore, breaking fair British or Irish hearts. I have tried to show that in the judgment of an ex-soldier, the difference between the life of a sailor in a fighting ship and the life of a soldier in a fighting regiment is by no means as great as it has been imagined. The army, I suppose, will grumble at such a pronunciamento. Let an objector, then, try being a lookout man all winter long on a destroyer ... or try firing a while. All is not quite purgatorial even at the front. Most army men know of quiet places along the line held on our side by rubicund, wine-bibbing, middle-aged French "territoriaux," _bons pères de famille_ who show you pictures of Etienne and Maurice; and garrisoned on the enemy's border by fat old Huns who want very, very much to get home to their great pipe and steaming sauerkraut. In such places each side apologizes for the bad taste of their supporting artillery, whilst grenade throwing is regarded as the bottom level of viciousness. Once in a while people die there of old age, gout, or chronic liver. No one is ever killed. Such "ententes cordiales" were far more frequent than those behind the line have ever suspected. On the other hand, some twenty miles down the trench swathe there may be a hillock constantly contested, a strategic point which burns up the lives of men as casually as the sustaining of a fire consumes faggots. Now it is the quick, merciful bullet in the head, now the hot, whizzing éclat of a high explosive, now the earthquake of the subterranean mine. But after all, a mine at sea is no more gentle