"Rest." Runners arrive breathlessly from all directions bearing
illegible chits, and tear off in the same directions with illegible
answers or no answer at all. Motor-bicycles snort up to the door and
arrogant despatch-riders enter with enormous envelopes containing
leagues of correspondence, orders, minutes, circulars, maps, signals,
lists, schedules, summaries and all sorts. The tables are stacked with
papers; the floor is littered with papers; papers fly through the
air. Two type-writers click with maddening insistence in one corner.
A signaller buzzes tenaciously at the telephone, talking in a strange
language apparently to himself, as he never seems to be connected
with anyone else. A stream of miscellaneous persons--quarter-masters,
chaplains, generals, batmen, D.A.D.O.S.'s, sergeant-majors,
staff-officers, buglers, Maires, officers just arriving, officers
just going away, gas experts, bombing experts, interpreters,
doctors--drifts in, wastes time, and drifts out again.

Clerks scribble ceaselessly, rolls and nominal rolls, nominal
lists and lists. By the time they have finished one list it is long
out-of-date. Then they start the next. Everything happens at the same
time; nobody has time to finish a sentence. Only a military mind,
with a very limited descriptive vocabulary and a chronic habit of
self-deception, would call the place orderly.

The Adjutant speaks, hoarsely; while he speaks he writes about
something quite different. In the middle of each sentence his pipe
goes out; at the end of each sentence he lights a match. He may or may
not light his pipe; anyhow he speaks:--

"Where is that list of Wesleyans I made?
And what are all those people on the stair?