impossible unless they are rightly carried out.

When we came back from the Loire in September, after our
temporary retreat, the British _personnel_ at this place
grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands
of troops always passing through, thousands of men in
hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses.
And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the
Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole
treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised.
Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced
by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the
Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the
pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals.

As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own
lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking,
civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation--the base
provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy
Atkins wants, and _close at hand_; wet and dry canteens,
libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial
cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent
behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier
and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime.

Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of
labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses,
timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the
stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of
the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious