Mildly interested in sport as such, what he liked about his job was that it kept his feet warm and his mind employed, and he arranged so that his daily journey ended sufficiently far from Head-quarters for some hospitable unit to say, “Oh, stop and have lunch!” It would then be a nice walk back, a quiet hour or so, getting the correspondence into shape before the Colonel returned from the afternoon ride, by which he shook down his lunch and made a place for his dinner. After that would be tea, orders to sign and circulate, mess, a game of cards, and another day would be done. He had long found out that the great art of war lay not in killing Germans, but in killing time. Over and over again, every day and all day, as he moved up and down those wintry roads, he looked at the faces of the men who knew now that the great offensive had resulted in infinitesimal gains, enormous losses, and only approached the end of the War by so many weeks. He failed entirely to make out what was going on in their minds. Officers were always officially pleased to see him because he was attached to Divisional Head-quarters, because he came to talk about games, not about work, because he was, as he was perfectly conscious, one of the most difficult fellows in the world to quarrel with. He had never had any great bitterness in life, and was so averse to official “side” that he made an effort to appear as informal as possible. Sometimes N.C.O.’s would be produced, consulted as to whether a team could be got together, what amount of special training could be allowed intending pugilists, without interfering with necessary drills and fatigues, what histrionic, (or to put it frankly), what music-hall talent could be found. The N.C.O.’s were (of course) keen, smart, attentive, full of suggestions and information. They had to be. They kept their jobs by so being, and their jobs gave them just the opportunity to live about as well as lumbermen in the remote parts of North America, instead of existing like beasts in barns, not pet animals, not marketable produce, but just beasts, herded and disposed of, counted and controlled, for such was the fate of the average infantryman, and war being what it is, there came a gradual acquiescence in it. It could be no other.