The senior British officer did, of course, from time to time issue stringent orders about the paramount importance of secrecy, and sometimes personally harangued the occupants of each building. But the difficulty was to cater for the odd handful—what we used to call “the elusive half per cent”—who either succeeded in absenting themselves from such harangues or, if present, failed to understand their purport, and of whom it might fairly be said that they were so stupid and perverse as to be a real danger to their own side, on whichever side of the line. A bump of carelessness, a bump of cussedness, a faulty sense of discipline, and a penchant towards selfish individualism—when two or three endowed with these qualities were gathered together, the lot of those responsible for their actions was not a pleasant one. The senior officer was powerless, if any chose disloyally or unintentionally not to support him; he exercised the authority vested in his person by virtue of King’s Regulations, and there it ended. A court of enquiry and a threat of post-bellum action against the offender was the limit of his power. Nor was it easy to enjoin general secrecy on a subject which was never put publicly into words. Hole, not tunnel, was the word used, if a word had to be used—and then only in an undertone, or behind closed doors. But in spite of these potential sources of leakage, nothing occurred to mar the progress of the tunnel until the middle of May, when it had been in full swing for five and a half months and reached to somewhere about the middle of the vegetables. Then a bomb-shell fell. It was announced one day on _appel_ that in consequence of measures of reprisals which had been taken against German officers in a certain camp in England, counter-reprisals would be put into force in the Xth Army Corps until further notice. There would be no less than four _appels_ a day, at 9 a.m., 11.30 a.m., 3.30 p.m. and 6 p.m.; music, theatricals, games, and walks were to be stopped; and no newspapers were to be permitted into the camp. The Commandant regretted, but orders were orders, and so on in the usual vein.