gaol, but these gaunt unlovely buildings, packed beyond endurance with
men of the new army, were at least in some way in touch with what was
happening elsewhere. Even in that first month of the war it seemed
callous to be breathing the sweet, clear air of Braemar, or to let one's
eyes linger on the matchless beauty of mountain and glen. The grey spire
of my church rising gracefully among the silver birches and the dark
firs, bosomed deep in purple hills, pointed to some harder way than
that. Stevenson, who wrote part of _Treasure Island_ here, called it
'the wale (pick) of Scotland,' but just because it was so we saw more
clearly the agony of Belgium and the men of our heroic little Regular
Army dying to keep us inviolate.

Up to the 10th of September recruits poured in in such numbers that it
was hard to cope with the situation in the most superficial way. On that
date the standard was raised, and, as though a sluice had been dropped
across a mill dam, the stream stopped suddenly and completely. I suppose
that was the object of the new regulation, but it caused
misunderstanding, and to this day the spontaneous rush of the first
month of the war has never been repeated. Beyond doubt the numbers were
too great to be properly handled. Men slept in the garrison church, in
the riding school, on the floor in over-crowded barrack-rooms, in leaky
tents without bottoms to them. There were no recreation rooms. It rained
a great deal, and once wet a man with no change of clothing or
underclothing remained wet for days in his meagre civilian suit. There
were too few blankets, no braziers, and the cheap black shoes of civil
life were soon in tatters. Everybody became abominably verminous, and
though the food was good enough in its way the cooks were overwhelmed,
and it was often uneatable. Nobody was to blame, and in an astonishingly
short time order began to emerge, but in those early days one enormous
'grouse' went up continually from the new army that was not yet an army,