I know a Captain Jones, resident a cottage on the road to the trenches (he calls this cottage his "Battle Box"), whose mind was very violently moved from the impersonal to the personal point of view by a quite trifling incident. He has one upstairs room for office, bedroom, sitting, reception and dining room. His meals are brought over to him by his servant from an estaminet across the road over which his window looks. The other morning he was standing at this window waiting for his breakfast to arrive. It was a fine frosty day, made all the brighter by the sound of approaching bagpipes. Troops were about to march past, suggesting great national thoughts to Jones and reminding him of the familiar details of his own more active days. Jones prepared to enjoy himself. Colonels on horses, thought Jones as he contemplated, are much of a muchness--always the look of the sahib about them, the slightly proud, the slightly stuffy, the slightly weather-beaten, the slightly affluent sahib. Company Commanders, also on horses, but somehow or other not quite so much on horses as the Colonels, are the same all the army through--very confident of themselves, but hoping against hope that there is nothing about their companies to catch the Adjutant's eye. The Subaltern walks as he has always done, lighthearted if purposeful, trusting that all is as it should be, but feeling that if it isn't that is some one else's trouble. Sergeants, Corporals, Lance-corporals and men have not altered. The Sergeants relax on the march into something almost bordering on friendliness towards their victims; the Corporals thank Heaven that for the moment they are but men; the Lance-corporals thank Heaven that always they are something more than men, and the men have the look of having decided that this is the last kilometre they'll ever footslog for anybody, but while they are doing it they might as well be cheerful about it. The regimental transport makes a change from the regularity of column of route, and the comic relief is provided, as it has always been and always will be provided whatever the disciplinary martinets may say or do, by the company cooks. This was a sight, thought Jones, he could watch for ever. He was sorry when the battalion came at last to an end; he was glad when another almost immediately began. He was in luck; doubtless this was a brigade on the move. He proposed to have his breakfast at the window, when it came as come it soon must, thus refreshing his hungry body and his contemplative mind at the same time. The second battalion, as the first, were fine fellows all, suggesting the might of the Allies and the futility of the enemy's protracted resistance. Again the comic relief was provided by the travelling cuisine, reminding Jones of the oddity of human affairs and the need of his own meal, now sufficiently deferred.