"A hefty lot! ... Wish I were leading them." The praise and the wish came from a young English officer who was staying in the same hotel with me. For two days I had watched his desperate efforts to avoid death by boredom. He read every line of the Matin and Journal before luncheon, with tragic sighs, because every line repeated what had been said in the French newspapers since the early days of the war. After luncheon he made a sortie for the English newspapers, which arrived by boats. They kept him quiet until tea-time. After that he searched the cafés for any fellow officers who might be there. "This is the most awful place in the world!" he repeated at intervals, even to the hall porter, who agreed with him. When I asked him how long he had been at the base he groaned miserably and confessed to three weeks of purgatory. "I've been put into the wrong pigeon-hole at the War Office," he said. "I'm lost." There were many other men at the British base who seemed to have been put into the wrong pigeon-holes. Among them were about two hundred French interpreters who were awaiting orders to proceed with a certain division. But they were not so restless as my friend in the hotel. Was it not enough for them that they had been put into English khaki--supplied from the store-cupboard--and that every morning they had to practise the art of putting on a puttee? In order to be perfectly English they also practised the art of smoking a briar pipe--it was astoundingly difficult to keep it alight--and indulged in the habit of five o'clock tea (with boiled eggs, ye gods!), and braved all the horrors of indigestion, because they are not used to these things, with heroic fortitude. At any cost they were determined to do honour to le khaki, in spite of the arrogance of certain British officers who treated them de haut en bas. The Base Commandant's office was the sorting-house of the Expeditionary Force. The relays of officers who had just come off the boats came here to report themselves. They had sailed as it were under sealed orders and did not know their destination until they were enlightened by the Commandant, who received instructions from the headquarters in the field. They waited about in groups outside his door, slapping their riding-boots or twisting neat little moustaches, which were the envy of subalterns just out of Sandhurst.