He must have either been quite reckless, or what is known as a “barrack-room lawyer.” I let him be, as I was not sure that there is any military law under which he could have been punished. A comfortable man, Mr. Harry Howard, to be entrusted with the despatch of an all-important message at the critical moment of a campaign, while a spy who had “crossed the palm” was waiting round the corner!
It was presently disclosed that this correspondence on the official side was from the first simply what the Germans expressively call “a blow on the water.” It began with a foregone conclusion. An influential friend conversant with the circumstances wrote to the authorities representing with a certain vigour that he considered the treatment I had met with to have been ungracious and unfair. He was told in reply that, “As the Secretary of State for War considers that civilians who attach themselves to an army ought not be deemed eligible for war medals, the adverse decision with regard to Mr. Forbes must remain untouched.”
This is explicit, and therefore it would not have been in accordance with official tradition to have simply intimated the à priori resolution to me when I sent in my claim.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found within each story in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Pages [279] and [286] both used “Chapter IV”; in this eBook, the second one has been changed to “Chapter V”.