In all this maze of abbreviation, G.H.Q. is the combination most often heard at the front. For G.H.Q. is the head of the army, the brain and nerve centre which directs and governs the whole vast organism of our fighting force, from the most advanced stretch of sandbags which marks the firing-line back to the enormous office of a thousand clerks, where the regimental records are kept in a snug French town far to the rear. To the men in the firing-line G.H.Q. is the home of the “brass-hats” (as Staff officers are popularly styled), a mysterious and remote place from which unexpected and inexplicable edicts are issued forth, mostly leading to unwelcome changes in comfortable billets or cosy trenches, a snug spot of soft jobs and easy living. In reality G.H.Q. is nothing of the kind. I wish some of the imaginative writers who, in the course of one or other of the political controversies which this war has brought forth, have described G.H.Q. as a centre of fashion, swarming with idle A.D.C.’s buzzing about beautiful ladies, could spend a day or two in the place. Luxury follows fashion as surely as trade follows the flag. One glance at the bedroom which would be reserved for our friend, the imaginative writer, at the local hotel would speedily disillusionize him as to G.H.Q. being fashionable, luxurious, or even comfortable. ---- (the etiquette of our army in the field forbids me even now to lift the transparent veil enveloping the identity of the French town where Sir John French has installed his General Headquarters) is not Brussels of 1815. Nor is it Capua. It is a small town with historic associations, particularly with England, the greater part of any architectural and antiquarian beauty it may have possessed, however, swept away by the growth of industry. G.H.Q. is a place of hard work and of simple living. The men in the trenches who “grouse,” as all good soldiers “grouse,” about the “soft” and “safe” jobs at G.H.Q. have no conception of the strenuous life of the men in the offices there. I am personally acquainted, not with one or two, but with scores of officers who are at their desk at eight o’clock, or earlier, each morning, Sundays included, and are kept hard at it, with not more than two hours’ break in the day, until eleven o’clock at night. Rank makes no distinction. In fact, the heads of the different services set the example of “hustle” to their subordinates. “Never in my life,” said an officer with a distinguished record of service in the field in South Africa, “have I worked so hard as I have done at G.H.Q. I have not heard a shot fired in this war; I have never seen a shell burst; I have not set eyes upon a German, not even a German prisoner. I never get any time for exercise. Sometimes I long to be up in the trenches, getting hard and fit in the fresh air, and winning clasps for the war medal.”