When I had been medically examined, passed as fit, had donned a uniform and commenced my training, I learnt what the enduring of hardship was. No experience on active service has equalled the humiliation and severity of those first months of soldiering. We were sneered at, cleaned stables, groomed horses, rode stripped saddle for twelve miles at the trot, attended lectures, studied till past midnight and were up on first parade at six o'clock. No previous civilian efficiency or prominence stood us in any stead. We started robbed of all importance, and only gained a new importance by our power to hang on and to develop a new efficiency as soldiers. When men “went sick” they were labelled scrimshankers and struck off the course. It was an offence to let your body interfere with your duty; if it tried to, you must ignore it. If a man caught cold in Kingston, what would he not catch in the trenches? Very many went down under the physical ordeal; of the class that started, I don't think more than a third passed. The lukewarm soldier and the pink-tea hero, who simply wanted to swank in a uniform, were effectually choked off. It was a test of pluck, even more than of strength or intelligence--the same test that a man would be subjected to all the time at the Front. In a word it sorted out the fellows who had “guts.” “Guts” isn't a particularly polite word, but I have come increasingly to appreciate its splendid significance. The possessor of this much coveted quality is the kind of idiot who, “When his legs are smitten off Will fight upon his stumps.” The Tommies, whom we were going to command, would be like that; if we weren't like it, we wouldn't be any good as officers. This Artillery School had a violent way of sifting out a man's moral worth; you hadn't much conceit left by the end of it. I had not felt myself so paltry since the day when I was left at my first boarding-school in knickerbockers. After one had qualified and been appointed to a battery, there was still difficulty in getting to England. I was lucky, and went over early with a draft of officers who had been cabled for as reinforcements. I had been in England a bare three weeks when my name was posted as due to go to France. How did I feel? Nervous, of course, but also intensely eager. I may have been afraid of wounds and death--I don't remember; I was certainly nothing like as afraid as I had been before I wore uniform. My chief fear was that I would be afraid and might show it. Like the pale-faced chap in the tap-room at Stratford, I had fleeting glimpses of myself being shot as a deserter.