"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking. Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and not reduced by one stripe."
"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day singing—singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of sheer weariness—well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them, but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at that."
The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial." He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a Parliamentary draughtsman. "Yes," he said, after some pertinent emendations, "it'll do. But the title is too long for common use at G.H.Q."
"Why!" said the other with a certain paternal sensitiveness, "what do you suggest?"
"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pensively,—"I suggest we call it Stokes's Act."
Now this story has one merit—if it has no other. It is true. And as for the rest of the Act and its preamble, and its sections and its sub-sections, are they not written in the Statute Book? In the Temple they call it 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But out there they call it "Stokes's Act."