good-by to my friends in the regiment. He granted it; and the next morning a train whirled me through pleasant English country to Aldershot. At the station I met an English Tommy.

"I suppose you're looking for the Newfoundlanders," he said, glancing at my shoulder badges. I was still wearing the service uniform I had worn in camp in Scotland, for I had not been regularly attached to the office force in London.

"I'll take you to Wellington Barracks," volunteered the Englishman. "That's where your lot is."

We trudged through sand, on to a gravel road, through the main street of the town of Aldershot, and into an asphalt square, surrounded by brick buildings, three storied, with iron-railed verandas. Men in khaki leaned over the veranda rails, smoking and talking. A regiment was just swinging in through one of the gaps between the lines.

Lord Kitchener talking to some Australians at AnzacToList

"Company, at the halt, facing left, form close column of platoons." Company B of the First Newfoundland Regiment swung into position and halted in the square just in front of their quarters. "Company, Dismiss!" Hands smacked smartly on rifle stocks, heels clicked together, and the men of B Company fell out. A gray-haired, iron-mustached soldier, indelibly stamped English regular, carrying a bucket of swill across the square to the dump, stopped to watch them.

"Wonder who the new lot is?" said he to a comrade lounging near. "I cawn't place their bloomin' badge."

"'Aven't you 'eard?" said the other. "Blawsted colonials; Canydians, I reckon."

A tall, loose-jointed, sandy-haired youth who approached the two was unmistakably a colonial; there was a certain ranginess that no amount of drilling could ever entirely eradicate.

"Hello, Poppa," he greeted the gray-haired one, who had now resumed his journey toward the dump. "What will you answer when your children say, 'Daddy, what part did you play in the great war?'"

He of the swill bucket spat contemptuously, disdaining to answer. The sandy-haired youth continued airily across the square and up the stairs that led to his quarters. I followed him up the stairs and through a door on which was printed "Thirty-two men," and below, in chalk, "B Company." We entered a long, bare-looking room, down each side of which ran rows of iron cots. Equipments were piled neatly on the beds and on shelves above; two iron-legged, barrack-room tables and a few benches completed the furniture. At one of the tables sat two young men. One of them, a massively built young giant, looked up as the door opened.

"Hello, Art," he said to my conductor. "You're just the man we want. Don't you want to join us in a party to go up to London?"

"No," answered Art; "if you break leave this week, you don't get to the front."

The big fellow stretched his massive frame in a capacious yawn.

"I don't think we'll ever get to the front," he said. "This isn't a regiment. It's an officers' training corps. They gave out a lot more stripes to-day, and one fellow got a star—made him a second lieutenant. You'd think this was the American army; it's nothing but stars and stripes. Soon 't will be an honor to be a private. The worst of it is, they'll come along to me and say, 'What's your name and number?' The only time they ever talk to me is to ask me my name and number; and when I tell them, they put me on crime for not calling them 'Sir,' and when I don't they have me up for insolence."

Art laughed. "Cheer up, old boy," he said; "you'll soon be at the front, and then you won't have to call anybody 'Sir.'"

"What's the latest news about the regiment?" I inquired of my conductor.

"I suppose you know that the King and Lord Kitchener reviewed us," he said, "and this afternoon we are to be reviewed once more. It's a formality. We should leave this evening or to-morrow for the front. I suppose we'll go to some seaport town and embark there."

While we were talking a bugle blew. "There's the cook-house bugle," said Art. "Come along and have some dinner with us." He took some tin dishes from the shelves above the beds, gave me one, and we joined in the rush down the stairs and across the square to the cook house.

In the army, the cook house corresponds to the dining-room of civilization. B Company cook house was a long, narrow, wooden building. On each side of a middle aisle that led to the kitchen were plain wooden tables, each accommodating sixteen men, eight on each side. When we arrived, the building was full. When you are eating as the guest of the Government, there is no hostess to reserve for you the choice portions; therefore it behooves you to come early. In the army, if you are not there at the beginning of a meal, you go hungry. Thus are inculcated habits of punctuality. But if you are called and the meal is not ready, you have your revenge. Two hundred and sixty-two men of B Company were showing their disapproval of the cooks' lack of punctuality. Screeches, yells, and cat cries rivaled the din of stamping feet and the banging of tin dishes. Occasionally the door of the kitchen swung open and afforded a glimpse of three sweating cooks and their group of helpers, working frenziedly. Sometimes the noise stopped long enough to allow some spokesman to express his opinion of the cooks, and their fitness for their jobs, with that delightful simplicity and charming candor that made the language of the First Newfoundland Regiment so refreshing. Loud applause served the double purpose of encouraging the speakers and drowning the reply of the incensed cooks. This was a pity, because the language of an army cook is worth hearing, and very enlightening. Men who formerly prided themselves on their profanity have listened, envious and subdued, awed by the originality and scope of a cook's vocabulary, and thenceforth quit, realizing their own amateurishness. Occasionally, though, one of the cooks, stung to retort, would appear, wiping his hands on his overalls, and in a few well-chosen phrases, cover some of the more recent exploits of the one who had angered him, or endeavor to clear his own character, always in language brilliant, fluent, and descriptive.

But the longest wait must come to an end, and at last the door of the kitchen swung open and the helpers appeared. Some mysterious mess fund had been tapped, and that day dinner was particularly good. First came soup, then a liberal helping of roast beef, with potatoes, tomatoes, and peas, followed by plum pudding. B Company soon finished. In the army, dinner is a thing not of ceremony, but of necessity.

I did not wait for my sandy-haired friend; his name, I gathered, was Art Pratt. He and a neighbor were adjusting a difference regarding the ownership of a combination knife, fork, and spoon. I found my way back to the room marked "Thirty-two men." Just as I entered, I heard the bugle sound the "half-hour dress."

All about the room men were busy shining shoes, polishing buttons, rolling puttees, and adjusting equipments. This took time, and the half hour for preparation soon passed. In the square below, at the sound of the "Fall In," eleven