After we had pitched our tents amongst some mimosa scrub, during which process our barefooted servants leapt about like cats on hot bricks, we were informed that the Sirdar would receive the correspondents in his tent. Bennett-Burleigh had arrived in the meantime, having stolen away from the Lancers' camp and the other correspondents, and ridden forty miles that day--a fine performance, if not strictly in accord with military discipline. We thereupon collected our little cohort of fifteen, and went off to meet the General. I did not enjoy the interview, which was as barren of results as it was humiliating. The only parallel to it which I can think of is that of a row of curates before a brusque and autocratic bishop. During the brief commonplaces which passed between us, the general impression conveyed to me was the immeasurable condescension of our chief in even deigning to address the representatives of a Press which has never failed to extol even to the verge of exaggeration the achievements of the Anglo-Egyptian Army and its leader! How deep the gulf which appeared to separate the Egyptian commander-in-chief from the civilian correspondent! In short, I should advise anybody who cannot put his pride in his pocket to avoid the rôle of amateur war correspondent in Egypt. The professionals are, I suppose, to some extent inoculated by this time, and cling to the delusion that correspondents during a campaign are treated like officers. At the same time, I am bound to confess that if I were a commanding officer I should not be favourably impressed with the _genus_ "correspondent" as a whole. There is sometimes a blatant self-conceit and vulgar swagger about a war correspondent which is very irritating, while in other cases intolerance of discipline and incessant attempts to override military regulations for mere private ends have gone far to justify Lord Wolseley's _dictum_ that correspondents are "the curse of modern warfare." Of course there are delightful exceptions to this sort of thing to be met with in a war correspondent's camp. Some of the men who engage in this most delightful occupation are good fellows in every sense of the phrase,--brave, generous, and clever,--and it is a privilege to enjoy the companionship of men like Steevens, Scudamore, Villiers, and others whom I could name.