That battalion was quartered in the village for a few days. That very evening, and each evening during its stay, their pipers strode once up and once down the village street, playing the time-hallowed tattoo. After nightfall the men quartered in the barns and sheds all around chased dull care away by impromptu concerts. The rousing choruses--veritable symposia of all the music-hall successes of the past two years--mingling with the strains of mouth-organs, evoked memories which were positively poignant in our isolation at the front of tired crowds streaming back into London on hot Bank Holiday nights in summer. For a few days one caught a glimpse of the kilt in the village, one heard now and then the skirl of the pipes, and then, one morning at daybreak, the battalion moved on. After that, I continually came across the New Army at the front. I seemed to be following, stage by stage, its progressive acclimatization to the new life, its training for the new work. More than once I encountered an entire division on the march between towns in rear of our lines. The men’s uniform seemed to be of a more homogeneous khaki tint than that of the veteran battalions in the field, and I was particularly struck by the excellent leather harness and the splendid condition of the big shire horses of the transport. Little by little the New Army was creeping towards the front. Now I would meet one of its officers doing a spell in the trenches, now a company trudging with full equipment towards the firing-line along some Flanders road, whose forlorn appearance spoke of “frightfulness” past and to come. In the same way as the Territorials, the New Army was gradually familiarized with the conditions in the trenches, until a whole division was deemed suitably prepared for holding its part of the line alongside of Regular and Territorial troops. Like the Commander-in-Chief, everybody in the field was impressed by the remarkably fine physique of the men of the New Army. Their appearance fully dispelled an idea that was current at one time, not only in England but also at the front, that the first of the New Armies would be made up of poor specimens of the nation’s manhood--that wastage in the form of the permanently unemployed and the casual labourers, who are always the first to be hit by an economic disturbance such as war produces. The splendid proportions of the men in many new battalions, not only in stature but also in muscular development, suggested that these men were ideal fighters, whatever their training might prove to be like. This impression was amply confirmed by the easy poise of the head and the clear expression of the eyes of the men of the New Army. Said the General commanding one of the first divisions of the New Army to come to France, in talking to me about his men: