motley coverings of the hosts that drilled in our fields and marched
about our lanes? The War Office Notes, under my hand, speak of these
months as the "tatterdemalion stage." For what clothes and boots there
were must go to the men at the Front, and the men at home had just to
take their chance.

Well! It took a year and five months--breathless months of strain and
stress--while Germany was hammering East and West on the long-drawn
lines of the Allies. But by then, January 1916, the Army was not only
clothed, housed, and very largely armed, but we were manufacturing for
our Allies.

As to the arms and equipment, look back at these facts. When the
Expeditionary Force had taken its rifles abroad in August 1914, 150,000
rifles were left in the country, and many of them required to be
resighted. The few Service rifles in each battalion were handed round
"as the Three Fates handed round their one eye, in the story of
Perseus"; old rifles, and inferior rifles "technically known as D.P.,"
were eagerly made use of. But after seven months' hard training with
nothing better than these makeshifts, "men were apt to get depressed."

It was just the same with the Artillery. At the outbreak of war we had
guns for eight divisions--say 140,000 men. And there was no plant
wherewith to make and keep up more than that supply. Yet guns had to be
sent as fast as they could be made to France, Egypt, Gallipoli. How were
the gunners at home to be trained?

It was done, so to speak, with blood and tears. For seven months it was
impossible for the gunner in training even to see, much less to work or
fire the gun to which he was being trained. Zealous officers provided