So far, so good. The next thing was to rig the medical board. I applied for permission to give evidence as a friend of the patient. There were three doctors on the board—a regular R.A.M.C. colonel and major, and a captain, who was obviously a ‘duration of the war’ man. I had not been long in the room when I realized that the colonel was patriotic and unsympathetic, that the major was reasonable but ignorant, and that the captain was a nerve-specialist, right-minded, and my only hope. I had to go through the whole story again. I was most deferential to the colonel and major, but used the captain as an ally to break down their scruples. I had to appear in the rôle of a patriot distressed by the mental collapse of a brother-in-arms, a collapse directly due to his magnificent exploits in the trenches. I mentioned Siegfried’s ‘hallucinations’ in the matter of corpses in Piccadilly. The irony of having to argue to these mad old men that Siegfried was not sane! It was a betrayal of truth, but I was jesuitical. I was in nearly as bad a state of nerves as Siegfried myself and burst into tears three times in the course of my statement. Captain McDowall, whom I learned later to be a well-known morbid psychologist, played up well and the colonel was at last persuaded. As I went out he said to me: ‘Young man, you ought to be before this board yourself.’ I was most anxious that when Siegfried went into the board-room after me he should not undo my work by appearing too sane. But McDowall argued his seniors over.