wool-classing and coker-nut planting.

The way the Company Commanders dealt with this problem was quite
simple and ingenious. They sent for all junior officers and asked
what they were prepared to teach. The result seemed really rather
good. Tom said he would take French, having spent three months in
Northern France before they sent him to Salonika. Dick's father
has an allotment and Dick himself occasionally hunts, so he chose
Agriculture, Oswald chose Mathematics, on the strength of having been
a Quartermaster-Sergeant in the Public Schools Brigade in September,
1914. Wilfred once went to a gas course for ten days, so of course
his subject was Science. Arthur really does know something about
Architecture and can also enlarge a map quite nicely, so he put down
Drawing. John chose Theology. He said he once read the lessons in
church; really he thought he was safe to draw a blank.

Once more the Company Commanders were equal to the emergency. They
looked at it in this way. French is a foreign language; Spanish is
also a foreign language. Tom offers to teach a foreign language;
therefore Tom shall teach Spanish. Corn-growing in Western Canada,
sheep-raising in Australia and coker-nut planting are all obviously
agriculture. Dick says he can teach Agriculture; so he shall. The
science of manures caused some discussion as to whether it should
be agriculture or science, but it was finally settled in favour of
science, which also included physics, electricity and crystallography.
John got four theological students, but, when he investigated, he
found that one was a Jew and one a Presbyterian minister, while the
other two, like himself, thought that no one else would have thought
of it. And these touch only the fringe of the subject.