line, with their great parks of armoured cars, motor lorries, and
ammunition waggons, their filter-carts, and their little clusters and
eddies of men resting in billets. The Military Police on point-duty have
a comparatively quiet time, although despatch-riders are, of course, for
ever whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the Front. It is as
full of departmental offices as Whitehall itself--some 153 of them to be
exact--each one indicated by a combination of initial letters, for staff
officers are men of few words and cogent, and it saves time to say "O."
when you mean Operations, "I." for Intelligence, "A.G." for
Adjutant-General; a fashion which is faithfully followed at the other
H.Q., for D.A.A.Q.M.G. saves an enormous number of polysyllables.

Hence the proximity of hostilities has left but little outward and
visible sign upon the ancient town. The tradesmen have, it is true, made
some concessions to our presence, and one remarks the inviting legends
"Top-hole Tea" in the windows of a _pâtisserie_ and "High life" over the
shop of a tailor. Four of us made a private arrangement with a buxom
housewife, whereby, in return for four francs per head a day and the
pooling of our rations, she undertook to provide us with lunch and
dinner, thereby establishing a "Mess" of our own. Many such fraternities
there were in the absence of a regular regimental mess. But these
arrangements were more private than military, the only obligation on the
ordinary householder being the furnishing of billets. Occasionally the
cobbled streets became the scene of an unwonted animation when young
French recruits celebrated their call to the colours by marching down
the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German
prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which
they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd. One such squad I saw
arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down
to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen