the surface of the clear amber stream, the orchard through which the
communication trench had been cut burst into blossom, the sticky clay
walls of the trench became hard as masonry in the sun, and one morning a
board appeared with the legend "Hyde Park. Keep off the grass."

With these amenities their manners grew more and more refined. I have
read somewhere, in one of those dull collections of sweeping
generalisations that are called sociology, that each species of the
_genus homo_ has to go through a normal sequence of stages from
barbarism to civilisation, and that we were once what the South Sea
Islanders are now. Which may be very true, but as regards that
particular primitive community I can testify that their social evolution
has in three months gone through all the stages that occupy other
communities three thousand years. They began as cave-dwellers and they
end by occupying suburban villas--the captain's dug-out has a roof of
corrugated iron, a window, a book-shelf, a table, and even chairs, and
his table manners have vastly improved. They have progressed from
candles stuck in bully-beef tins to electric reading-lamps. Three months
ago they were hairy men whose beards did grow beneath their shoulders,
and their puttees were cemented with wet clay; to-day they are
clean-shaven and their Burberrys might be worn in Piccadilly. They slept
with nothing between them and the earth but a ground sheet what time
they were not, like the elephant, sleeping on their feet and propped
against a trench wall. Now they sleep on a bed with a wooden frame. I
have read somewhere that for a thousand years Europe was unwashed. It
may be so, but I know that this particular tribal community progressed
rapidly through all such stages, from a bucket to a shower-bath in
billets, in about six weeks, and you can see their men any day washing
themselves to the waist near the support trenches--men who a month or
two ago had forgotten how to take their clothes off. They are, in fact,