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all. I don’t know. I always have to tell everybody: smoke if you want to. Don’t you want to be comfortable? Mind you, you won’t be able to play a part and keep it up. That’s why we’re here three days. You couldn’t do it. But there’sno concealed microphones and no cameras in none of the pictures. These pictures are all quite harmless. I thought some of the nudes were—what shall I say?—interesting. That’s at first, but you get quite used to them. There’s no lights-out and no reveille, but breakfast is at eight and we like you better washed.”
    Cream double doors opened at this point, and a full colonel and six majors came diffidently in.
    “This is the Board,” said the sergeant-major casually, with a wave of the hand. “Colonel Argent, the president , probably wants to say something.”
    “Good morning,” said the president. “I’ll introduce the Board, if I may.”
    “It’s terrifying,” said Stanley after lunch. “I’m sitting opposite our testing officer and there’s that life-size nude on a couch just above him.”
    At two they began on the intelligence tests. There were twenty minutes of superimposed circles and dots, followed by a series of ninety-eight questions with answers to be underlined.
    “Which is inappropriate here?” asked the first one. “PLAICE, CAMEL, RHINOSCEROS, YAK, GRAVY. The answer is, of course, GRAVY. Now go straight on.”
    By No. 34 Stanley’s head began to swim.
    After this a number of cards were held up for ten seconds at a time. The candidates were told to write down the first thoughts that came into their heads. The first card read: “ BEER. ”
    Stanley thought it would be best to write something like “Ah”. There was, in fact, no time to write anything else. Next card: “HAPPY” .
    Cautious, even in exhaustion, Stanley fell back on punctuation.
    “CAREFUL. MOTHER. WOUNDED. GIRL”. The thirty cards came and went. Stanley wrote: “??”, or “!!?”, and occasionally “!?!?!?!”.
    Then a questionnaire: “From which of the following ailments do you suffer?”
    Stanley tried to strike a nice balance between hypochondria and sheer muscularity. He admitted to migraine and intermittent night-blindness.
    More forms.
    “Write an appreciation of yourself by a good friend.”
    “Write another appreciation as though by a sworn enemy.”
    Dinner at eight. The nude gazed steadily at Stanley.
    Breakfast at eight. Stanley changed his place to the other side of the table and to the far end. He was now faced by skeletal fishing boats beached against a purple sunset. The group testing officer also changed his place and was again opposite. Several times Stanley was on the verge of engaging him in conversation. Each time, however, the officer looked up impassively from his toast to see a contorted open-mouthed face across the table.
    Each time the face abruptly deflated.
    They went through a further series of tests.
    *
    In the first, a playing child was to be rescued from an escaped lion. Stanley was detailed to be the child, and a large man from Cambridge the lion.
    Stanley played round a tree, whistling unconvincinglyand whacking at tufts of grass with a stick. The lion, approaching unnoticed at a gallop, fell on him. Stanley , under the nervous compulsion of putting up a good show, wrenched frantically free, and hung from a low branch, kicking. The rescuers appeared, and under the same compulsion belaboured the lion savagely with dead branches.
    “For Christ’s sake,” roared the lion, in some pain.
    “Thank you,” said the testing officer, making notes.
    A Home Guard ran amok and was recaptured, stunned by a half-brick which hit him in the middle of the back.
    The candidates were warming up.
    Scheme “A”. Assault course. The two groups paraded in P.T. kit.
    “The obstacles are all numbered,” said the sergeant -major. “You have to find them. Being as you’ve no equipment or rifles, you have to take a twig round with you. Behind you.”
    The