Victoria Station--The “tenth man”--Leavetaking--Roar of London-- British habits--Everywhere khaki--System at the French port-- The correspondents’ home--Strict censorship--The one link with the reading public--Necessity for censorship--Freedom of the press--“Jig-saw” intelligence experts--The run of the trenches--Exchange of slang--Organisation of General Headquarters--A business institution--A colossal dynamo. Other armies go to war across the land, but the British go across the sea. They take the Channel ferry in order to reach the front. Theirs is the home road of war to me; the road of my affections, where men speak my mother tongue. It begins on the platform at Victoria Station, with the khaki of officers and men returning from leave, relieved by the warmer colours of women who have come to say good-bye to those they love. In five hours from the time of starting one may be across that ribbon of salt water, which means much in isolation and little in distance, and in the trenches. That veteran regular--let us separate him from the crowd,--is a type I have often seen, a type that has become as familiar as one’s neighbours in one’s own town. We will call him the tenth man. That is, of every ten men who went to the front a year ago in his battalion, nine are gone. All of the hardships and all of the terrors of war he has witnessed: men dropped neatly by a bullet; men mangled by shells. His khaki is spotless, thanks to his wife, who has dressed in her best for the occasion. Terrible as war itself, but new, that hat of hers, which probably represented a good deal of looking into windows and pricing; and her gown of the cheapest material, drooping from her round shoulders, is the product of the poor dressmaking skill of hands which show only too well who does all the housework at home. The children, a boy of four and a girl of seven, are in their best, too, with faces scrubbed till they shine. You will see like scenes in stations at home when the father has found work in a distant city and is going on ahead to get established before the family follow him. Such incidents are common in civil life; they became common at Victoria Station. What is common has no significance, editors say. When the time came to go through the gate, the veteran picked the boy up in his arms and pressed him very close and the little girl looked on wonderingly, while the mother was not going to make it any harder for the father by tears. “Good-bye, Tom!” she said. So his name was Tom, this tenth man. I spoke with him. His battalion was full with recruits. It had been kept full. But, considering the law of chance, what about the surviving one out of an original ten? “Yes, I’ve had my luck with me,” he said. “Probably my turn will come. Maybe I’ll never see the wife and kids again.”