THE FLANDERS HABIT IN PEACE TIME

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 84, 3 January 1919, Page 5

THE FLANDERS HABIT IN PEACE TIME

■ DISCIPLINE IN THE HOME. I am beginning to be seriously perturbed about .this peace'that has broken 0ut.60 suddenly (writes "Don Esses" in the "Daily Mail"). During four and a quarter years of soldiering, Army discipline on the one hand and the; free-and-easy manners of life in the open on the other hnnd .have engendered in ine cer--tuin habits and ways of thinking which I shall not easily rid mysolf of on' my retii,™ to civil lite, and I foresee trouble.Take, for instance, the question of discipline. For more than four .years J. have given unquestioning obedience to those above lhe; and exacted unquestioning obedience from those below me. Men have said to me, "Do this," and I have done it; I have said to men, "Do that," and it lias been done. t How will it all work out when I am again merely tha head of a small middle-class household i I have a cook whoso temper is at all times uncertain, and a daughter who even beforo the war showed signs of possessing a decided will of her own. If my steaic is overdone, or if I discover that Pamela has again been to the theatre with that undesirable young man Charlie X, I shall probably wnut to/* have tlio culprits brought up before me in the dining-room so that I may iddross them thus: "Jemima brown, you are charged with having, on 2nd inst., been guilty of neglect of duty, inasmuch as you, being at the time a cook in domestic service, did wilfully and knowingly scorch threequarters of a pound of prime English beef, thereby rendering it unlit; for human consumption. "Pamela Smith, you axe charged with a contravention of 'Papa's Kegulations,' para. Y, sub-sect. inasmuch us, etc. What have you got to say for yourselves?" Well, knowing my .cook and my daughter, I imagine they will have plenty to say for themselves; and the worst of it is that I shall 110 longer have the power to cut short a rambling harangue with a peremptory "Seven days' C.B. March out, sergeant-major." Consider another case. When for months 011 end one's dining-room has been a hole in tho ground, covered with a tarpaulin, table manners are apt to become easy. Is there not a danger, then, that 011 some dreadful occasion when I am taking ten in the vicar's draw-ing-room I may forget my surroundings and absently knock out my pipe ashes against tho leg of a Sheraton chair or fling the dregs of my cup over my shoulder? ; At the bottom of,iuy garden there is a dilapidated toul, shed. I'. havo it in my mind to furnish this shed with a few empty boxes, hang my tin hat, my field glasses, and my box respirator on its walls, tack up ii map of Flanders, and complete its fittings with a few tin lungs and platters. Then, when the complexities of domestic and social lifo bear too heavily upon me, 1 shall retire to my! shed and, with the aid of a candle stuck iu a cigarette tin, read an old copy of the "Daily Mail, and imngino I am back in tho good old days of 1911-18. In Amsterdam there is one factory which outs 400,000 diamonds every year.-