One of the sections was down the road, quite five minutes away. During the walk we exchanged views about the war. He confided to me that the ideal was to have in each wagon line an officer who knew no more about gunnery than that turnip, but who knew enough about horses to take advice from veterinary officers. In return I told him that there ought not to be any wagon lines, that the horse was effete in a war of this nature, that over half the man-power of the country was employed in grooming and cleaning harness, half the tonnage of the shipping taken up in fetching forage, and that there was more strafing over a bad turn-out than if a battery had shot its own infantry for four days running. The outcome of it all was pure farce. He inspected the remaining section and then told me he was immensely pleased with the marked improvement in the condition of the animals and the horse management generally (nothing had been altered), and that if I found myself short of labour when it came to building a new wagon line, he thought he knew where he could put his hand on a dozen useful men. Furthermore, he was going to write and tell my Colonel how pleased he was. The sergeant-major’s face was a study! The psychology of it is presumably the same that brings promotion to the officer who, smartly and with well-polished buttons, in reply to a question from the General, “What colour is black?” whips out like a flash, “White, sir!” And the General nods and says, “Of course!--Smart young officer that! What’s his name?” Infallible! 13 It is difficult to mark the exact beginnings of mental attitudes when time out there is one long action of nights and days without names. One keeps the date, because of the orders issued. For the rest it is all one. One can only trace points of view, feelings, call them what you will, as dating before or after certain outstanding events. Thus I had no idea of war until the gas bombardment in Armentières, no idea that human nature could go through such experiences and emotions and remain sane. So, once in action, I had not bothered to find the reason of it all, contenting myself merely with the profound conviction that the world was mad, that it was against human nature,--but that to-morrow we should want a full échelon of ammunition. Even the times when one had seen death only gave one a momentary shock. One such incident will never leave me, but I cannot feel now anything of the horror I experienced at the moment.