What amused me about the show was to see that the performers were every whit as interested and excited in the performance as the crowd. Every horseman was on his mettle to show off his horse and his horsemanship. Some of the riders indulged in touches of superb swagger. When at the end of the trick-riding the horsemen stopped dead in the middle of a rush, and, suddenly wheeling their horses, brought up short at the saluting-point to the note of a bugle, those stalwart figures, swelling with pride, sitting their panting, foam-flecked horses, presented as magnificent a spectacle as I have seen in this war. By the time these pages will have seen the light the Indian Corps will have been a year at the front. In September last the first of them landed at Marseilles, a bizarre procession that might have passed out of the pages of The Thousand and One Nights, swarthy faces and bristling moustachios and glittering eyes beneath proud turbans, strange knives and implements, odd-looking carts, mules, goats. There was a spell of wild and delirious enthusiasm among the _Marseillais_, most imaginative of French populations ... and the Indians passed on. I saw them later at Orléans, some of the cavalry and part of the Lahore Division. The principal hotel was full of Indian Army officers. They all seem to have a certain modesty of mien, a blend of reserve and simplicity, that marks them down, apart from the Indian drill uniform and the little forage-caps that so many of them wear. The city swarmed with Indians. Their little mule-carts, in charge of dark-skinned _mehtars_, or sweepers, heads muffled up in all manner of cloths to keep out the first touch of autumnal damp, stood outside shops, surrounded by gaping crowds. To and fro in the streets native orderlies passed with their curious straight stride, their impassive faces, scarcely seeming to note the air of profound curiosity wherewith the good people of Orléans followed them. Here a Pathan _sowar_ in khaki puggaree held a pair of stamping horses outside an office; there a fatigue-party of Gurkhas with pronounced Mongolian cast of features, slouch hats and _kukri_ slung at the back of the belt, came marching solidly over the cobble-stones, and swung their heads smartly over at the command of their havildar in his curious clipped English: “Eyes ... rait!” as a Brigade Major went by resplendent in new “brass hat” and red tabs. The barber’s shop in the principal street was crowded with healthy, dusty young men, back from long drills at the camp outside the town, clamouring for hair-cuts and shaves, and buying hair-oils and soap and razor blades with a reckless extravagance that made the proprietor pinch himself to make sure he was not dreaming.