Sleepless night—the bare hard ground an awkward resting-place, and our look-out on the outer edges of outer civilisation. Over on the left of camp a tireless, cheerful youngster, with spirit undaunted, is holding the long, dreary watches through the night. Once he was a dandy-dressed youth of a great city. He has come through a lot since then, he has learned his lesson and his position in a grim world of naked realities. He has risen from nothing to become a man—stripped of the fine clothes of his drifting butterfly days, and aware now of how little they were. For him the war has held more than loyalty to his country, for it held for him, in its own time, and in its own way, the finding of himself. A boy changed to a man, and the man seeing a world that is not as he built it. He has sighed and fretted for lost dreams, but he knows the battle-ground of Life’s conflict must be in the arena before him, and, headstrong and vigorous, he accepts the challenge against strange weapons and foes, and is of the stuff to prove that he has grown to be a worthy defender of his race. ROUTINE At your post there are some days when mists are in your eyes, and you cannot clearly see; there are days when mountains must be climbed with aching limbs and burdened back; and there are days when you are humbled in wretchedness, and glad of the kindliness of natives. Those days we all experience, but, thank God, there are days when the sky is blue and sunshine is in everything, and it is good to be alive. CHARACTER AND COMMAND Eighty per cent. of the rank and file are good fellows, glad to do their best if treated with consideration, humanity, and a little love. They are all very human, and you cannot prevent them from thinking in a human way. What they expect and desire is a strong command that lays down a just and reasonable order of things, and carries them through without confusion and change. To supply such command is often difficult—for, again, it is human nature that has to be dealt with. Perhaps thirty per cent. of young officers are in part ignorant or forgetful of their trust and its bearing on good or bad organisation. They are sometimes inclined to imagine themselves set on a pedestal above the rank and file, spending more thought than should be on rivalling one another for rank, and stylishness, and a well-catered mess, while their men go forgotten, and left to look after themselves. One may truly say that one does not always find strong men in large majorities down the list of young officers of a battalion—men who have a prolonged determination and ambition to endure the hard fight for a complete, wholesome, and wholly dangerous and united force. Here and there one may pick out the strong men, who never lose their military interest and who will brave anything, and then look at the remaining line which clearly shows, in the chain which is to bind the whole of a battalion, some weakness of strength, and the full extent of our failing.