pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other
with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the
inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think it indecent, or merely
eccentric; perhaps both. But then, as Anatole France has gravely
remarked, a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of chastity.
Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals has reminded us, cleanliness
of body is next to orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you
may, with God's grace, escape one or more of the seven plagues of
Flanders. These seven are lice, flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and
"souvenirs." The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean
cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsmanlike and irritating habits
they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not
entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too
much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from
an impassive man with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room.

But it may well happen that in spite of babies, and baths, and brass
bands, and footballs, and boxing-gloves, and playing marbles (the
General in command of one of our divisions told me he had seen six
Argyll and Sutherland sergeants playing marbles with shrapnel bullets in
some support trenches), the men get bored. They are often very crowded,
and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate
shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his
neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may
become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander
sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a
good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in
the winter months, when out visiting Divisional Headquarters, did I, in
the shameful luxury of my car, come across a battalion slogging along
ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing with almost reproachful