the English are mad in their love of fresh air, consented to leave it
unlit.

When first we arrived, five large soldiers with five large kits, the
aspect of the room filled us with terror. The fiercest frost or foe we
could have faced, but the bravest man may quail before wax-flowers and
fragile tables top-heavy with ornaments and knick-knacks, and all felt
that to encounter such things within the Arctic Circle was an unfair
test of our fortitude. Why had not the War Office or some newspaper
correspondent warned us?

Madame, however, proved to have a sense of proportion or humour; or
perhaps the collection was not her own. In any case she showed no
reluctance to displace family photographs or china dogs, and rapidly
had the room cleared for action; so that now, when we roll about the
floor in friendly struggle, it is only someone's toilet tackle that
crashes with its spidery table, instead of cherished artificial fauna
and flora.

Thanks to our serviceable and becoming Arctic kit and the steady
approach of the Spring thaw, heralded by the preparation of spare
bridges to replace the existing ones, we can defy the eccentricities
of the climate. Even the language begins to reveal what might be
termed hand-holds; though possibly, when the natives echo our words
of greeting, painfully acquired from textbooks on Russian, they are
simply imitating the sounds we make under the impression that they are
learning a little English.

More difficult problems arise, however, regarding questions of
military etiquette. Not King's Regulations, nor Military Law, nor