The line across which the petrol passes from the company’s hands into those of the Army is just outside the doors of the filling sheds. Here the Army Service Corps men take the full cases over, and give a receipt for each case, in the form of a brass disc, to the company’s representatives. Conversely, the Army Service Corps hand in the empty cases and tins to the company’s men, and receive similar receipts for them. A balance between these two sets of receipts is struck at the close of business by the officers on both sides. A GIANT COBBLER’S SHOP The biggest cobbler’s shop in the world is at one of the British Army’s bases in France. It mends the boots of about as many persons as live in Liverpool or Glasgow. But nearly all the persons whose boots it mends are adult men living in the open, most of them using their feet on wet or rough ground for the greatest part of each day. So it has to mend 2,800 boots a day. The Worn Boots’ Departure. It would be too much to ask that, after the mending, every man should get his own boots back. Even if that could be done, he would have to wear strange boots meanwhile; for, unlike the soldiers of some other countries, the British soldier does not bring two pairs of boots into the field, and does not want to, having enough weight to carry without. So, when his boots need repair, he hands them in to his company quartermaster-sergeant and sees them no more. They depart from him into the general stock of still serviceable, though not new, army clothing, just as his shirt does when he comes out of trenches, has a hot shower-bath, and puts on somebody else’s shirt which has been disinfected and washed at the Divisional Laundry. The Receiving Room. The damaged boots go, higgledy-piggledy, into a sack, with others. The sack goes to the rail-head, with or without the help of a battalion transport cart and a divisional motor lorry. From the rail-head the sack goes, without trans-shipment, to a siding outside the back door of the base repair depôt, and the boots are emptied out on the floor of what may be called the receiving room. Here they are first roughly sorted out and cleaned of the mud which often encases them. This is done by women. Thence they are passed on to an expert shoemaker, to be tried for their life. He does nothing but diagnose the condition of boot after boot. He picks up each boot, looks it over for a couple of seconds with a swift, judicial glance at sole, heel, uppers and welt, and throws it down on his right or on his left. Bootlaces.