In my own case I am persuaded that my Captain and my Colonel, relying blindly on the N.C.O.s, were honestly convinced that I was a bad character. Five years after I left the regiment I met one of my former officers, who was then military attaché to one of the embassies. He did not recognise me, and did not catch my name. In the course of conversation I inquired whether he had known a man named Decle, who had served in his regiment. "Don't I remember him!" he said. "He was a most incorrigible rogue! My friend Captain Hermann often spoke to me about him: he was a fellow who would never do any work, and who was most ungrateful. Although fairly intelligent, he worked so little that he was classed last at the final examination, and they had to keep him a second year. I remember that there was some talk of sending him before a court-martial, as he once made serious false allegations against his Sergeant-major. Altogether he was a bad lot. Do you know what has become of him?" I replied in the affirmative, and the military attaché asked me somewhat anxiously if I knew him well. "He is my best friend," I replied, "and you are now talking to him." The attaché looked much embarrassed, but I soon put him at his ease, and assured him that I was in no way offended. I told him exactly what had happened, and he acknowledged that it was too true that, in many cases, officers formed their opinion entirely from Sergeants' reports, "but," he added helplessly, "what else can we do?" And he really seemed to think the question unanswerable. I had a good opportunity of personally observing the practical working of French military organisation at the time of the Madagascar war. Everything was at sixes and sevens.