At Kissaki camp we experienced a bad plague of mice. At the time we were there, the entire neighbourhood had been burnt out by the natives in clearing their cultivated ground of undergrowth, and this had driven the mice into camp. There were thousands of them—they lived in your grass roof by the score, they scuttled about the floor of your hut o’ nights, and while you slept they played “hide and seek” over your blankets. It was a common thing for half a dozen biscuit-tin traps—make-shift traps made by ingenious Tommies—to catch a hundred mice in a night. Those are but brief references to the forms of Nature that were closely associated with the campaign; some giving us pleasure, some adding to our trials and discomforts—but all memorable to those who have bivouacked and trekked under the tropic sun. CHAPTER IX HERE AND HEREAFTER WAR War is as a storm of the clouds—a human storm. Dark frowning clouds, commotion and strife, and outbursts of thunder—and before the threatening disaster we tremble, and hope and fear. It is the changing of the Universe, this mighty upheaval within nations, and there is the impulse of Destiny in it. As a storm will clear the atmosphere, afterwards there will be sunshine and better things. Not for to-day, and the present, is this warring of nations, but for the future, and the wisdom of those who in generations will follow us. Was not the world growing fast into a plaything? Something in the form of a pleasure-giving empty bubble, growing larger, floating uncertainly, the surface substance—that which is visible to the eyes and mind—transparent, and weak, and unworthy of the clear and vigorous world from which it had risen, brightly coloured, and to which it was fast descending, colourless and vague. As a bubble will burst, so was a climax imminent. Does not war, this drastic liberation of opposite forces, hold for us a lesson? Are we not passing through the throes of upheaval to change the mind of our race from vanity to wisdom? The world to-day is steeped in blood and sorrow; and all the suffering would be in vain, were there not hope that the world will arise in the end sobered, and humbled, and eager to live anew. WAR MATERIAL [Sidenote: THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONT] Is not to enter war to enter an arena of great possibilities, wherein a great game may be played, or a bad game? but, in any case, it is so closely and seriously fraught with terrible issues that it bares the character of men to the very bone. And there are many characters—not one character, but a thousand characters; some great, some small, some active, some dormant, but out of all such elements it is a wise man’s wish to weld a universal organisation of strength; and an ignorant man’s folly to look at no other ambition but his own.