The Rest Hut (February-March, 1918) by E.W. Hornung

I had thought of finishing my account of our opening day with the impressions of a Corporal in the A. S. C., as recorded in his diary that very night. But though the extract reached me in a most delightful way, and though decency would have disqualified the flattering estimate of 'the Superintendent' (as 'a man of cheery temperament'), on examination none of it quite fits in. As description it covers, though with the fleeter pen of youth, ground on which I have already loitered: enough that it was all 'a big surprise' to him: 'a "home from home" already to one soldier of a literary turn, and likely in his opinion to prove a joy to 'some of the lonely hearts of the lads in khaki. ' _Q. E. F._

And though it was weeks and months before the Corporal's testimony came to hand, it felt from the beginning as though we really had 'done it. ' I say 'it felt,' because there was something in those few thousand cubic feet of air that one could neither see nor hear; something atmospheric, and yet far transcending any atmosphere, whether of the smoking-room or library or what-not, that we had thought to create; for it was something the men had brought with them, nothing that we had ready. Just as they say on the stage that it is the audience who do half the acting, so it was the soldiers who fought half our little battle -- and the winning half.