The Guards trenches are famous all along our line. Deep, and well made, and clean, and as safe as they can be made, they are named after London streets familiar to the Guards on their “walkings out” on Sunday evenings--Piccadilly and Bond Street and Edgware Road and Praed Street. When the Guards are in their trenches they are kept scrupulously neat and tidy; the greatest attention is paid to hygiene, with the result that the plague of vermin and flies is probably less felt here than in any other part of the line. There is a fine disdain for the shirker in the Guards. The Guards esteem it an honour to be able to fight with the Guards against the Germans, and therefore among the men there is nothing but contemptuous pity for the young fellow who prefers to loaf at home to earning the proud right to say in after years: “I was with the Guards in Flanders!” But for the Guards officer who should stay away from his battalion in the front line for any reason whatsoever, even to do useful duties in the rear, the officers have nothing but the most withering disdain. It is no use arguing the question. It is no use pointing out to them that a man who is by temperament not a fighter can render better service to the country by serving on a Staff or doing other work behind the fighting-line. The only reply is that “they cannot imagine how the fellow can stay away from his battalion at a time like this.” You feel that they are often unjust in such wholesale condemnation, but you cannot help admiring the real Guards spirit which is reflected in this attitude of mind. Their spirit is one of the most jealous exclusiveness. It is apparent in their mental attitude as well as in their dress. The Guards officers have succeeded in investing even their prosaic service khaki with one or two little touches that render their uniform quite distinct from that of officers of the line. In the first place, the different Guards regiments retain their distinctive button groupings in the service tunics of the officers, the buttons being arranged in ones for the Grenadier, in twos for the Coldstream, in threes for the Scots Guards, and in fours for the Irish Guards. It is etiquette that the buttons should be of dulled bronze, and as small and as unobtrusive as possible. No badges are worn on the collar, and the badge on the cap is silver and diminutive in size. Many Guards officers affect excessively baggy breeches, cut like full golfing-knickers, and worn with puttees. They are certainly distinctive, but they can hardly be said to be becoming, and are liable to get sodden and heavy from the wet in the trenches, I am told.