Then, of course, he believed very strongly in 'The Book,' not Holy Writ, but all that mass of small red publications which expound the whole art of being a soldier in a style calculated to invest with mystery the most obvious truths. 'It says it in The Book' was his great gambit--and a good one too. Yet he betrayed the most astonishing ignorance of The Book. Any second lieutenant could have turned him inside out in two minutes on Field Service Regulations, and just where you expected him to be really efficient and knowledgeable, the conduct of trials, and Military Law, and so on, he made the most hideous elementary howlers. But ignorance is easily forgivable if a man will work, if a man will learn. But he would neither. He left everything to somebody else, the second-in-command, the adjutant, the orderly-room. He would not say what he wanted (he very seldom knew), and when in despair you made out his orders for him he invariably disagreed; when he disagreed he was as obstinate as a mule, without being so clever. When he did agree it took half an hour to explain the simplest arrangement. If you asked him to sign some correspondence for the Brigade, he was too lazy and told you to sign it yourself; and when you did that he apologized to the Brigade for the irregularities of his adjutant--'a Temporary fellow, you know.' For he had an ill-concealed contempt for all Temporaries; and that was perhaps one reason why we disliked him so much. He would not believe that a young officer, who had not spent twenty years drinking in mess-rooms, could have any military value whatever. Moreover, it annoyed him intensely (and here he had my sympathy) to see such men enjoying the same pay or rank as he had enjoyed during the almost apocryphal period of his captaincy. And having himself learned practically nothing during that long lotus-time, it was inconceivable to him that any man, however vigorous or intelligent, could have learned anything in two years of war. Now let me repeat that I do not believe him to be typical of the Old Army, I know he was not (thank God); but this is a history of what happened to Harry, and Colonel Philpott was one of the things which happened--very forcibly. So I give him to you as we found him, and since he may be alive I may say that his name is fictitious, though there are, unhappily, so many of him alive that I have no fears that he will recognize himself. He would not be the same man if he did. We went out for a fortnight's rest after that battle, and Harry had trouble with him almost at once. He had amused and irritated Harry from the first--the Old Duds always did--for his respect for authority was very civilian and youthful in character; he took a man for what he was, and if he decided he was good stood by him loyally for ever after; if he did not he was severe, not to say intolerant, and regrettably lacking in that veneration for the old and incapable which is the soul of military discipline.