We gossiped as though in St. James's Street. Other young Scottish officers came up and shook hands, and said: “Jolly weather, isn't it? What do you think of our little show?” Not one of them gave a glance at the line of dead men over there, behind their parados. They told me some of the funny things that had happened lately in the battalion, some grim jokes by tough Jocks. They had a fine crowd of men. You couldn't beat them. “Well, good morning! Must get on with the job.” There was no anguish there, no sense of despair, no sullen hatred of this life, so near to death. They seemed to like it... They did not really like it. They only made the best of it, without gloom. I saw they did not like this job of battle, one evening in their mess behind the line. The colonel who commanded them at the time, Celt of the Celts, was in a queer mood. He was a queer man, aloof in his manner, a little “fey.” He was annoyed with three of his officers who had come back late from three days' Paris leave. They were giants, but stood like schoolboys before their master while he spoke ironical, bitter words. Later in the evening he mentioned casually that they must prepare to go into the line again under special orders. What about the store of bombs, small-arms ammunition, machine-guns? The officers were stricken into silence. They stared at one another as though to say: “What does the old man mean? Is this true?” One of them became rather pale, and there was a look of tragic resignation in his eyes. Another said, “Hell!” in a whisper. The adjutant answered the colonel's questions in a formal way, but thinking hard and studying the colonel's face anxiously. “Do you mean to say we are going into the line again, sir? At once?” The colonel laughed. “Don't look so scared, all of you! It's only a field-day for training.” The officers of the Gordons breathed more freely. Poof! They had been fairly taken in by the “old man's” leg-pulling... No, it was clear they did not find any real joy in the line. They would not choose a front-line trench as the most desirable place of residence. XVI In queer psychology there was a strange mingling of the pitiful and comic--among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrial England and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, banded together in a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. They gave a shock to our French friends when they arrived as a division at the port of Boulogne. “Name of a dog!” said the quayside loungers. “England is truly in a bad way. She is sending out her last reserves!” “But they are the soldiers of Lilliput!” exclaimed others.