last thing he saw before he left his office: three men standing
at his gate, in that attitude of contented and contemplative
leisure which one associates with Saturday afternoons and
village pumps, looking at nothing in particular and spitting
thoughtfully as occasion required. One of them was a British
soldier, one a French soldier and one a German soldier. The
whole picture suggested anything but war; if there was a war on,
which nation was fighting against which? My friend, however, is
somewhat oddly situated in this respect, since he commands for
the moment a detachment of German prisoners in our back area.
Some of them, he tells me, are extraordinarily smart. One
Prussian N.C.O. in particular was remarkable. Dressed in his
impressive overcoat, hatted for all the world like our Staff and
carrying under his arm his dapper cane, this N.C.O. went round
from group to group of working prisoners, accompanying the
English sergeant in charge of the party and interpreting the
latter's orders to the men. So striking was his get-up that all
paused to look at him.

Thinking it might please you, my friend showed me an official
memo., which he had just received from one of his officers in
command of an outlying detachment, and of course of the odds and
ends of British personnel adhering thereto: cooks, guards, etc.
The memo. ran as follows, and it repays careful study and
thinking out; I give you the whole of it:--

"_To the Commanding Officer, Orderly Room, Hqrs._"

The undermentioned is in my opinion entirely unfitted
for the duty to which he has been detailed with this