came upon a group of soldiers; I will not mention their company. One of these soldiers was in conversation with a lance-corporal. You may not believe it, but it was a fact that he addressed the corporal by his Christian name; _he called him Jack_. The corporal made no protest. To think that the First Battalion has sunk to a level where it is possible for such familiarity to exist between N.C.O.’s and the men under their command! Naturally, I put the corporal under arrest, and he appeared before me at once on the charge of ‘conduct unbecoming to an N.C.O.’ He was reduced to the ranks, and the man was given field-punishment for using insubordinate language to an N.C.O. And, I warn you, if any further case of the sort comes to my notice—and I expect you officers to report the slightest instance to me at once instead of dealing with it as a company matter....’ I tried to catch Siegfried’s eye, but he was busy avoiding it, so I caught David’s instead. This is one of those caricature scenes that now seem to sum up the various stages of my life. There was a fresco around the walls of the class-room illustrating the evils of alcoholism. It started with the innocent boy being offered a drink by his mate, and then his downward path, culminating in wife-beating, murder, and _delirium tremens_. The battalion’s only complaint against Montagne was that women were not so easy to get hold of in that part of the country as around Béthune; the officers had the unfair advantage of being able to borrow horses and ride into Amiens. I remained puritanical. There was a Blue Lamp at Amiens as there was at Abbéville, Havre, Rouen, and all the big towns behind the lines. The Blue Lamp was for officers, as the Red Lamp was for men. It was most important for discipline to be maintained in this way. In January the Seventh Division sent two company officers from each brigade to instruct troops at the base. I and a captain in the Queen’s were the two who had been out longest, so we were chosen; it was a gift of two months longer life to us. XVII