the same way—are not easily distinguished, though the man does his best, clears his throat carefully between each verse and spits over the edge of the platform to improve his enunciation. No one objects to that. About manners and dress the audience is very little critical. But about the merits of the songs and the singers the men express their opinions with the utmost frankness. The applause is genuine, and the singer who wins it is under no doubt about its reality. The song which makes no appeal is simply drowned by loud talk, and the unfortunate singer will crack his voice in vain in an endeavour to regain the attention he has lost. Encores are rare, and the men are slow to take them. There is a man towards the end of the evening who wins one, unmistakably, with an imitation of a drunkard singing ‘Alice, where art Thou?’ The pianist fails to keep in touch with the hiccoughing vagaries of this performance, and the singer, unabashed, finishes without accompaniment. The audience yells with delight and continues to yell till the singer comes forward again. This time he gives us a song about leaving home, a thing of heart-rending pathos, and we wail the chorus: ‘It’s sad to be giving the last hand-shake, It’s sad the last long kiss to take, It’s sad to say farewell.’ The entertainment draws to its close about 8 o’clock. Men go to bed betimes who know that a bugle will sound the réveillé at 5.30 in the morning. The end is always the same, but always comes strangely, always as a surprise. We sing a hymn, for choice a very sentimental hymn. We say a short prayer, often as rugged and unconventional as the entertainment itself. Then ‘The King.’ In these two words we announce the national anthem, and the men stand stiffly to attention while they sing. At half-past eight, by order of the supreme authorities, Sweet Lavender hut must close its doors. The end of the entertainment is planned to allow time for a final cup of tea or a last glass of Horlick’s Malted Milk before we go out to flounder through the mud to our tents. This last half-hour is a busy one for the ladies behind the counter in the outer hall. Long queues of men stand waiting to be served. Dripping cups and sticky buns are passed to them with inconceivable rapidity. The work is done at high pressure, but with the tea and the food the men receive something else, something they pay no penny for, something whose value to them is above all measuring with pennies—the friendly smile, the kindly word, of a woman. We can partly guess at what these ladies have given up at home to do this work—servile, sticky, dull work—for men who are neither kith nor kin to them. No one will ever know the amount of good they do; without praise, pay, or hope of honours, often without thanks. If ‘the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom,’ surely these deeds of love and kindness have a fragrance of surpassing sweetness. Perhaps, after all, the hut is well-named Sweet Lavender.