"We might do a green tiger," she says reluctantly.
"With yellow stripes!" shouts the H.C.
"On a mauve background," says she, warming to it.
And so one division is disposed of. But it is not always so, of course.
After a Hun counter-attack, for instance, the H.C. may gaze morosely on his geometrical figures and throw off a little thing in triangles and St. Andrew's crosses. Or when the moon is at the full you may have a violet allotted to you as your symbol. One never knows. My own divisional sign, for instance, is an iddy-umpty plain on a field plainer. We vary the heraldry by ringing changes on the colours. On our brigade arm-band it becomes an iddy-umpty gules on a field azure. If I could be quite sure of the heraldic slang for puce I would tell you what it is on our Army Corps arm-band. On a waggon it used to be an iddy-umpty blank on a field muddy. But administrative genius has changed all that. A routine order, the other day, ordered a pink border to be painted round it, and this first simple essay of the departed Morse goes now through the villages of France in a bed of roses.
We wish sometimes that our conditions were changed as easily as our signs.
