There was a very strong sense of equality between officers of different rank when off duty--at mess, in sport, etc. Officers belonging to the same mess never waited for each other when dinner was announced, whatever the rank of the absent colleague might be, nor were inferiors expected to salute their superiors at mess or at the clubs, even in the case of a general. This custom sometimes caused offence to certain Italian generals or field officers, who could not understand why they were not saluted by British subalterns whom they met at a restaurant or club; it was of course not due to lack of deference on the part of the latter, but to that tendency to exclude all feeling of _malaise_ between inferiors and superiors when off duty. The one real distinction between categories of officers in the British Army was that existing between those attached to the Staff and those who were not. The feelings of the latter, especially of regimental officers, towards the former were sometimes rather bitter, as indeed has been the case in all armies from the days of the _Iliad_ downward; in our own army the distinction was particularly marked. In the B.S.F., as I suppose in other British armies, the Staff officer considered himself superior intellectually to the average regimental or A.S.C. officer--and he generally was--while the latter had a certain contempt not unmixed with envy for the red-tabbed super-man enjoying the privileges and comforts of G.H.Q., and proximity to that magnificent divinity the C.-in-C., or even of such minor divinities as corps or divisional commanders, and avoiding the dangers of life in the front lines. “We run all the risks and do all the really hard work, whereas they get all the plums,” expresses the general attitude. But the conflict is inevitable and universal, and should not be taken too seriously, the more so as the majority of staff officers had usually been through the mill of trench warfare themselves, and often had been given staff appointments only after having been badly wounded. If anything, in the British Army the feeling against supposed _embusqués_ was less virulent than in others.