A typical inspection was one that I saw in the main street. The battalion was drawn up in full marching equipment on the road. Of those officers with packs on their backs one was only nineteen. This is the limit of youth to acquire a chocolate drop on its arm. The sergeant major was an old regular, the knowing backbone of the battalion, which had taken the men of clay and taught them their letters and then how to spell and to add and subtract and divide. One of those impressive red caps arrived in a car, and the general who wore it went slowly up and down the line, front and rear, examining rifles and equipment, while the young officers and the old sergeant were hoping that Jones or Smith hadn’t got some dust in his rifle-barrel at the last moment. Brokers and carpenters, bankers and mechanics, clerks and labourers, the new army is like the army of France, composed of all classes. One evening I had a chat with two young fellows in a battalion quartered in the village, who were seated beside the road. Both came from Buckinghamshire. One was a schoolmaster and the other an architect. They were “bunkies,” pals, chums. “When did you enlist?” I asked. “In early September, after the Marne retreat. We thought that it was our duty, then. But we’ve been a long time arriving.” “How do you like it?” “We are not yet masters of the language, we find,” said the schoolmaster, “though I had a pretty good book knowledge of it.” “I’m learning the gestures fast, though,” said the architect. “The French are glad to see us,” said the schoolmaster. “They call us the Keetcheenaires. I fancy they thought we were a long time coming. But now we are here, I think they will find that we can hold up our end.” They had the fresh complexions which come from healthy, outdoor work. There was something engaging in their boyishness and their views. For they had a wider range of interests than that professional soldier, Mr. Atkins, these citizens who had taken up arms. They knew what trench-fighting meant by work in practice trenches at home. “Of course it will not be quite the same; theory and practice never are,” said the schoolmaster. “We ought to be well-grounded in the principles,” said the architect-- imagine the average Mr. Atkins talking in such language!--“and they say that in a week or two of actual experience you will have mastered the details that could not be taught in England. Then, too, having shells burst around you will be strange at first. But I think our battalion will give a good account of itself, sir. All the Bucks men have!” There crept in the pride of regiment, of locality, which is so characteristically Anglo-Saxon.