theatre; and then there was the field officers’ dining-room--that was not too bad. But one window-pane was missing, and there was no heating apparatus, and the orderlies were always wanting to lay the plates; altogether there was not a superfluity of spare space; there was really only one decent room--the Alcove--and that was for one hour of the day allotted to the botanists and anatomists. For the rest of the time an agenda at the bottom of the Pitt League poster announced that “the Alcove was reserved for authors, architects and other students.” The Alcove was a small room opening out of the billiard-room, and its possession by the “authors, architects and other students” was a privilege jealously guarded. Not that we ever resorted to force, the mere strength of personality was sufficient. A few acid epigrams drove the intruders away with the impression that after all there were lunatics in the camp. Only one man stayed for more than an hour, and that was Captain Frobisher, a large, fat man who was doubtless an excellent soldier, but who was not an addition to a literary society that prided itself upon its exclusiveness. After all, when one is searching for a lost rhyme, or trying to make an honest scene sufficiently obscure to protect Canon Lyttelton’s delicate susceptibilities, it is disconcerting to have to listen to a conversation of this sort:-- “ ... And what do you think of the new offensive, Skipper?” “Oh, we’ll wipe the swine off the face of the earth. I hope our men don’t take too many prisoners. There’s only one sort of Hun that’s any use, and that’s a dead one. Excreta, that’s all they are, excreta.... What I say is, smash ’em, and then when they’re down tread on ’em. That’s all they’re fit for. A good Hun is a dead Hun.” Of course such rhetoric is excellent in its place, and in the mouth of a politician would appear as the supreme unction shed over the warring banners of humanity. But there are times.... Frobisher must go. We all decided that. The only difficulty was that ... well, even in confinement one must show respect to a senior officer. It would have to be done with considerable tact; we could hardly approach him ourselves. We supposed that if he really wanted, he could defend himself on the ground that he was a student, a student of the philosophical interpretation of a dozen cocktails. But yet he had to go. And finally Stone undertook the job. It took two bottles of Rhine wine to screw him up to the proper pitch, but we got him there at last; and nobly did he fulfil our trust. It was an unforgettable afternoon. Captain Frobisher was sitting at the middle table discussing over a bottle of wine his schemes for the entire destruction of the German race. The old saws were rolling smoothly from his tongue.