Both are wrapped in mystery so
profound that our range of speculation is practically unlimited.
Conjecture rages most fiercely in the Officers' Mess, which is in
touch with sources of unreliable information not accessible to the
rank and file. The humblest subaltern appears to be possessed of a
friend at court, or a cousin in the Foreign Office, or an aunt in the
Intelligence Department, from whom he can derive fresh and entirely
different information each week-end leave.
Master Cockerell, for instance, has it straight from the Horse Guards
that we are going out next week--as a single unit, to be brigaded with
two seasoned regiments in Flanders. He has a considerable following.
Then comes Waddell, who has been informed by the Assistant sub-Editor
of an evening journal widely read in his native Dundee, that The First
Hundred Thousand are to sit here, eating the bread of impatience,
until The First Half Million are ready. Thereupon we shall break
through our foeman's line at a point hitherto unassailed and known
only to the scribe of Dundee, and proceed to roll up the German Empire
as if it were a carpet, into some obscure corner of the continent of
Europe.
Bobby Little, not the least of whose gifts is a soaring imagination,
has mapped out a sort of strategical Cook's Tour for us, beginning
with the sack of Constantinople, and ending, after a glorified
route-march up the Danube and down the Rhine, which shall include a
pitched battle once a week and a successful siege once a month, with a
"circus" entry into Potsdam.
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