_Labourer employed at Barracks_ (_entering hastily_). Hullo! A fire!
Where's that key of mine for the hydrants? Can't attend to _that_,
however, as there's my wife and family to be saved! (_Rushes out, and
hydrants cannot be unlocked for ten minutes. When they are, they are
found to be without water!_)

_Colonel Commanding the Battalion_ (_just arrived on scene_). No
water! Well, of course there isn't! Hasn't the War Office ordered it
to be turned off at night, spite of my protests? Tell the Fire-Brigade
men to get water wherever they can!

[_Water eventually got in roads several hundred yards from
burning building._

_Non-Com. Officer_ (_directing two soldiers, who have gallantly
rescued a couple of children that have been burning and suffocating
under roof_). Yes, take 'em off to the hospital! Poor little
creatures--not much hope for _them_, I'm afraid! (_To Colonel._) A bad
business, Sir!

_Colonel_. Would have been worse if the men hadn't behaved so well,
and turned themselves into amateur firemen. No thanks to the War
Office that there aren't twenty-two deaths, instead of two. Why,
only six months ago, I warned 'em that the place was "unfit for human
habitation," and a regular death-trap in case of fire, with only one
narrow wooden staircase to the whole block. I wrote that, "if a fire
occurred at night, there must be many deaths." Yet nothing has been
done.

_Non-Com. Officer_. Shocking! There's a talk that the place had been