THE French are a great people; the more I see of them the more I admire
them, and I have been seeing a lot of them lately.
I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars
with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming
compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no
intention of babbling these jargons; it is the fault of my tongue, which
takes charge on these occasions, and seems to be under the impression that,
when it is talking to a foreigner, any foreign language will do.
Atkins, I notice, also suffers from a form of the same delusion. When
talking to a Frenchman, he employs a mangled cross between West Coast and
China pidgin, and by placing a long E at the end of every word imagines he
is making himself completely clear to the suffering Gaul. And the suffering
Gaul listens to it all with incredible patience and courtesy, and, what is
more, somehow or other disentangles a meaning, thereby proving himself the
most intelligent creature on earth.
We have always prided ourselves that the teaching of modern languages in
our island seminaries is unique; but such is not the case. Here and there
in France, apparently, they teach English on the same lines. I discovered
this, the other day, when we called on a French battery to have the local
tactical situation explained to us. I was pushed forward as the star
linguist of our party; the French produced a smiling Captain as theirs. The
non-combatants of both sides then sat back and waited for their champions
to begin. I felt a trifle nervous myself, and the Frenchman didn't seem too
happy. We filled in a few minutes bowing, saluting, kissing and shaking
hands, and then let Babel loose, I in my fourth-form French, and he, to my
amazement, in equally elementary English. The affair looked hopeless from
the start; if either of us would have consented to talk in his own
language, the other might have understood him, but neither of us could,
before that audience, with our reputations at stake.
Towards lunch-time things grew really desperate; we had got as far as "the
pen of my female cousin," but the local tactical situation remained as
foggy as ever, our backers were showing signs of impatience, and we were
both lathering freely. Then by some happy chance we discovered we had both
been in Africa, fell crowing into each other's arms, and the local tactical
situation was cleared "one time" in flowing Swahili. Our respective
reputations as linguists are now beyond doubt.
We became fast friends, this Captain and I. He bore me off to his cellar,
stood me the usual six-course feed (with wines), and after it was over
asked how I would like to while away the afternoon. I left it in his hands.
"Eh bien, let us play on the Bosch a little," he suggested. It sounded as
pleasant a light after-dinner amusement as any, so I bowed and we sallied
forth.
He led me to his observation post, spoke down a telephone, and about twenty
yards of Hun parapet were not. "That will spoil his siesta," said my
Captain. "By the way, his Headquarters is behind that ruined farm,"
"Which?" I inquired; there were several farms about, none of them in any
great state of repair.
"I will show you--watch," he replied, talked into the 'phone again, and far
away a cloud, a cloud of brick dust, smoked aloft. "_Voilà!_"
He thereupon pointed out all the objects of local interest in the same
fashion.
"We will now give him fifty rounds for luck, and then we will return to my
cellar for a cup of coffee," said he, and a further twenty yards of Hun
parapet were removed.
Suddenly there came an answering salvo from Hunland, and a flock of shells
whizzed over our heads.
"Tiens!" my Captain exclaimed. "He has lost his little temper, has he?
Naughty, naughty! I must give him a slap. A hundred rounds!" he shouted
into the 'phone, and the German lines spouted like a school of whales
blowing.
Again the Bosch slammed across a heavy reply. My Captain leapt to his
'phone. "He would answer me back, would he? The impudence! Give him a
_thousand_ rounds, my children!"
Then for the next hour or so the sky was filled with a screaming tornado of
shells, rushing, bumping, and bursting, and the Bosch lines sagged, bulged,
quivered, slopped over, and were spattered against the blue in small
smithereens.
"And now let us see what he says to that," said my Captain pleasantly. We
waited, we watched, we listened; but there came no reply (possibly because
there was no one left to make one), and my Captain turned to me, shoulders
shrugged, palms outspread, a grimace of apologetic disgust on his mobile
face--like a circus-master explaining that his clown has got the measles:
"Nottin, see you? _Pas d'esprit, l'animal!_"
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[Illustration: THE RUMOURISTS.