This advanced railhead was so near the line as to be full of interest

on the eve of the April push. It was here you could see the immediate

preparations and the immediate results of the preparatory activity.

The local casualty clearing stations gave good evidence; you could

tell, by watching their convoys, and talking with the wounded, and

observing in the operating-theatre, what was going on. Such significant

events as the growth of fresh C.C.S.'s and the kind of reserves they

were putting-in, were eloquent. Talk with the legion of Flying-Corps

observers who were about railhead was enlightening; so was the nature

of the reserves they were laying up. The bulk and description of the

supply-reserves dumped at railhead for pushing up by lorry-convoy to

Arras told their tale also. Every night a convoy of lorries would

load and move up under cover of the darkness. There was no mistaking

the meaning of such commodities in their freight as chewing-gum and

solidified alcohol. Do not suppose, reader, that chewing-gum is for

mere distraction in the trenches. Neither is solidified alcohol for

consumption by the addicted, but for fuel for Tommies' cookers when

coal and wood are impossible of transport. Commodities such as these

make one visualise a sudden and overwhelming advance. ---- tons of

baled straw were dumped at railhead. This was not for forage, but

to strew the floors of empty returning supply-trains for wounded.

Each C.C.S. in the area had to be prepared to improvise one such

ambulance-train per day when the push was at its height. The handling

of these things makes one abnormally busy; if he gets four-hours' sleep

in twenty-four he is doing famously. But one is never so jaded as not

to be interested in these portentous signs.

Once I went up to Arras on a night lorry. The convoy crept up into

the lip of the salient. The guns flashed close on either flank; the

star-shells lit the road from either side. The reserve dump was in

an old factory in the Rue ----. An enormous dump it was. The Supply

Officer lived next it on a ground-floor. His men burrowed in an

adjacent cellar. He had laid on the floor of the attic above him eight

layers of oats. A direct hit would have asphyxiated him with oats.

His dump was unhappily placed. There were two batteries adjacent.

Whenever there was a raid and the batteries let fly, they were

immediately searched for. In the search his dump was found, on more

than one occasion. There were ugly and recent shell-holes about it. The

off-loading convoy was hit many nights at one point or another. He took

me to the bottom of the road after dark. The scream of shell was so

incessant that it rose to a melancholy intermittent moan.

Next day he took me about the town. Civilians were moving furtively.

They were not used to emerge before night. In any case such shops and

_estaminets_ as remained were prohibited from opening before 7.30 in

the evening. Wonderful!--how the civilians hang on. They have their

property; also, they have the money they can always make from the herds

of troops who make a fleeting sojourn in the place. Apart from the

proprietors of cafés and _estaminets_, they are mostly caretakers who

stay on: caretakers and rich old men with much property who prefer the

chance of being hit to leaving what their industry has amassed over

thirty years of labour....

The German fatigue on the railway was useful, if slow. It was supplied

from the prisoners of war camp near the station. When the thaw was in

progress we lost them, so heavy were the demands upon the camp for

road labour. The O.C. the camp sometimes visited to see what manner

of work they did. He threw light on their domestic behaviour in camp:

"The greediest ----s on earth!" he would say. "If one of them leaves

table for two minutes, his friends have pinched and swallowed his

grub. They steal each other's food daily--and they're fed well enough.

They're a sanctimonious crew, too; most of their post-cards from home

are scriptural, laden with texts and pictorial demonstration of the way

the Lord is with them. The camp is half-filled with religious fanatics;

they sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs when they're free. But

there's not much of the New Testament notion of the brotherhood of man

amongst 'em; they do each other down most damnably!..."

When the Arras advance was imminent their camp was moved farther back

from the line, and we lost them. The Deputy-Assistant-Director of

Labour sent a fatigue of 125 of the halt and the maimed--the P.B.'s;

altogether inadequate.

A Permanent-base man may be incapable of lumping. And even if he is not

incapable, he is usually in a position to say he is--none daring to

make him afraid. P.B. fatigues are highly undesirable.

"Pinching" supplies was by no means unheard of amongst them.

(Amongst whom at all is it unheard-of? Australians themselves are

the arch-appropriators of Army supplies.) But P.B. men do not pinch

with that faculty of vulpine cunning which is clear of detection.

One morning, after an all-night clearance, the A.P.M. found one of

the P.B.'s sneaking back to billet in the cold grey dawn with three

tins of pork and beans, two loaves of bread, six candles, imperfectly

concealed. He promptly put him in the clink. There was a court-martial.

The unhappy fellow got three months. Pinching in the Army should be

done judiciously. It is not a moral crime. Getting caught is. At any

rate, that is an intellectual, if not a moral crime.

I messed with a C.C.S. Most messes of medical officers are interesting

and varied. The Colonel was a Regular--an accessible and companionable

Regular. An Irishman he was, kind of heart and quick of temper; and so

able that it was never dangerous for him to allow his Captains to argue

with him on questions of administration, because he could always rout

them: he was always right. A less able man would have taken risks in

permitting argument on the subject of his administration.

He was the fiercest smoker and the ablest bridge-player I have ever

known. He used to complain bitterly of the standard of bridge played

by the mess in general. He put out his pipe chiefly to eat--to eat

rather than to sleep. He was a hearty, but not a voluptuous, eater.

His appetite was the consequence of genuine cerebration and of hard

walking. He walked, unless hindered by the most inevitable obstacles,

five miles a day--hard, with his two dogs and the Major. He was very

deaf, and very fond of his dogs. They slept in his room, usually (one

or other) on his bed. He slept little. He read and smoked in bed

regularly until about two; was wakened at six; took a pipe (or two)

with his tea before getting up; and sometimes--though rarely--resumed

his reading in bed until eight, or spent a happy hour in earnest

conversation with the dogs before rising.

His officers liked him; the Sisters loved him. To them he was

indulgent. The day before the push began a Sister approached him in his

office. She said that although it was her afternoon off, the Matron

had advised her against tramping, lest a convoy of wounded should

come in suddenly. He said: "My dear, you go."--"And how long may I be

away?"--"Well, you don't go on duty until eight in the morning; as long

as you're back by then, it's good enough. But mind--don't come reeling

in at 8.30 with your hair down your back! That's all I ask." She left,

adoring.

The Major was a mid-Victorian gentleman, with the gentlest manners

and language, except when it came to talk of Germans. He got an acute

attack of _Wanderlust_ soon after I came--felt the call of Arras--and

got command of a field ambulance up in the thick of it. The last I

heard of him was that he was hurrying about the city under a steel

helmet, succouring with his own hand those stricken down in the streets.

A French interpreter was attached to the hospital. He was a man of

forty-five, with the heart of a boy of fifteen. He would sit at the

gramaphone by the hour, playing his favourite music and staring into

vacancy. His favourites were: a minuet of Haydn, Beethoven's Minuet

in G, selections from the 1812 Overture, the Overture to _Mignon_,

and the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy. Everyone "pulled his leg";

everyone liked him--he was so gentle of heart, but so baffling in

repartee. They called him the _Pawkie Duke_, a name that came to him

through his comments when the facetious song of that title in the "St.

Andrew's Song-Book" was being sung. He lived in a hut in hospital. Part

of his duty consisted in mediation between the civilian sick and the

English M.O.'s; for by international agreement they were due to treat

any civilian sick who needed it. I first met Pawkie waiting in the

anteroom of the operating-theatre with a distracted mother whose child

was within under operation for appendicitis. She was a lovely girl of

ten. The mother was weeping anxiously. Pawkie was almost in sympathetic

tears himself. He made excursions of high frequency into the theatre

to report progress to the mother. I went in. He came after, fumbling

nervously with his hands and regarding the surgeons with a gaze of

appeal. He would whisper to the Colonel, who reassured him. He tore

out, colliding with the orderlies who were bearing in another "case."

Seizing madame by the hands, he cried: "_Bien, madame! Elle va bien!

La pauvre petite fille fait de bon progrès. Les chirurgiens-major sont

très adroits. Le Capitaine est le chirurgien-spécialiste. Le Colonel

assiste aussi. Ça ne fait rien, madame!_" And he left madame with the

conviction that nothing could go wrong.

But it was pathetic to see that beautiful child, her fair face

smothered under the mask. At the end, when the wound was stitched, the

surgeon took her up as gently as though she were his own offspring and

carried her to her mother, and so on to the ward. There she stayed two

weeks, tended by him with the affection of an elder brother.

On the eve of the push, during the preparatory and retaliatory

bombardment, the theatre was a ghastly chamber. An abbatoir it was,

five hours after the arrival of the convoys, when the preparation of

the cases for operation had been completed. Five "tables" were in

continuous use. On "taking-in" night the surgeons invariably worked

through to daylight. This is very exhausting, so exhausting that they

never worked continuously. At about two o'clock they adjourned to

the mess for a rest and a meal--a solid meal of bacon and eggs and

coffee. For the push there came reinforcements--_teams_, as they were

called. They amounted to eight fresh surgeons, ten Sisters, and fifty

additional orderlies.

The Colonel called his M.O.'s together in the anteroom the Sabbath

before the attack, and gave them plain words of warning and advice.

In a push they were not to be too elaborate; it would lead to

injustice. Better twelve "abdominals" done roughly but safely than

four exquisitely finished operations. In the former case all twelve

would be rendered safe as far as the base; in the latter, the remaining

eight would probably die on their hands.... The examining officers in

the reception-room must come to a complete agreement with the surgeons

as to what manner of "case" it was imperative to operate upon before

evacuation to the base. There must be waste of neither surgical time

nor surgical energy in operating upon "cases" that would carry to the

base without it--and so on....

Anything one might say of Nursing-Sisters in France must seem

inadequate. The wounded Tommy who has fallen into their hands is making

their qualities known. They work harder than any M.O., and M.O.'s

are hard-worked. Indeed, I defy a man to bear indefinitely the kind

of work they do indefinitely--its nervous strain and its long hours.

The M.O.'s do their examinations and their dressings and pass on;

they are the merest visitors. The Sisters stay on and fight for the

man without cessation, and then see him die. Five and six deaths in

the ward in a night is horribly hard on the Sister in charge of it.

No one but a Sister could do the work she does, in a ward or in the

operating-theatre. It is nonsense to speak of abolishing women from the

medical service; it would be inadequate without them. But their work

will leave its mark upon them for ever. They have not a man's faculty

of detachment.

Because they are so absorbed by their work---as well as for other

feminine reasons--they see the ethics of the struggle less clearly than

a man.

Sisters on service are more prone to depression out of working hours

than are men; which is not amazing. They are more the subjects of

their moods, which is but temperamental too. But in the reaction of

elation after depression they are more gay than any man--even in his

most festive mood after evening mess. They smoke a good deal (and they

deserve it), but not as heavily as their civilian sisters in general,

though in isolated cases they smoke more heavily than any civilian

woman. But no one blames the fair fiends, however false this form of

consolation may be.

CHAPTER VI

ARRAS AFTER THE PUSH

The traffic on the cobbled road to Arras raises a dust--although it is

cobbled. The spring green of the elms that line it is overcast with the

pallor of a man under the anæsthetic. The fresh breeze raises a dust

that sometimes stops a motor cyclist; sometimes it is the multiplicity

of traffic that stops him. His face and hair are as dust-pallid as the

trees.

The push is over. The traffic in and out is as heavy as it could be.

There is no intermission in it. It files past the road control in a

procession in which there are no intervals.

The ingoing traffic is not all military. Incongruously among the

lorries lumber civilian carts stuffed with all the chattels of

returning refugees. One knows not whether it is more pathetic to see

these forlorn French families returning to the desolation of their

homes or flying from it. They will lumber down the flagged streets

lined with houses, rent and torn and overthrown, that were once the

homes of their friends and the shops of their dealers. Here at one

time they promenaded in the quiet Sabbath afternoon sunshine. Now the

pavement is torn with shell-holes and the street is ditched with them

and defaced with half-wrecked barriers. The Grand Place, where once

they congregated for chat in the summer twilight, or sunned themselves

in the winter, is choked with supplies and sweating troops. The troops

are billeted in the half-wrecked houses of every street. The refugees

will drive through to the place of their old homes and see the spring

greening the trenches which zigzag through their old gardens, and

clothing the splintered trees in their old orchards. This is worse

than fleeing from the wrath of shell to come. But they love their town

so intensely that they rattle through the city gate with an aspect of

melancholy satisfaction.

The push has left its mark all over Arras. There was desolation before

it. But such was its punishment when it was the centre from which we

pushed, that destruction has spread into every street. Intensity is the

quality of the destruction. And it is still going on. Shell are still

screaming in.

The splendid cathedral is an amorphous heap of stone; there are

infrequent pillars and girders that have escaped, and stand gaunt among

the ruins. The Hôtel de Ville retains but a few arches of its beautiful

carved front. Splendid _maisons_ are in ruins. In the streets there

are the stone barricades and entaglements of barbed wire. The _gare_,

as busy as the Amiens _gare_ before the war, and as fine, is rent and

crumbling. The network of lines under its glass roof is grass-grown.

The fine _Place_ before it, where you can envisage the peace traffic

in taxi's and pedestrians, is torn by shell, or by fatigues which have

uprooted the stone for street barricades.

Most people who see for the first time the desolation of such

buildings as the cathedral cry out angrily upon German vandalism,

with the implication that it is because they were fine and stately

that the cathedral and the Hôtel de Ville were battered. This is not

only unjust, but nonsensical. The German has other things to think

of than the deliberate destruction of beautiful buildings because

they are beautiful. What he has to consider is their height and their

potential usefulness as observation-posts. And this is what he does

consider, as we would and do consider such features too. Had we been

bombarding Arras, it is the tall and beautiful cathedral that we would

have shattered first. You may as logically rail against the Germans

for smashing down these potential observation-posts as object to the

prosecution of the War on Sunday....

The old warning notices persist, and have been put up more plain and

frequent: _Assembly-Point_, indicating the cellars of refuge; warnings

against touching unexploded shell; and so forth.

The Town Major, the Railhead Ordnance Officer, the Railway Transport

Officer, the Railhead Supply Officer, the Railhead Salvage Officer--all

are intensely busy, and all well sandbagged. The Salvage officer

is beset by his friends for souvenirs. The R.O.O. is beset by the

quartermasters of battered battalions for fresh equipment. The R.S.O.

is hunted by the hungry. The R.T.O. is at his wits' end to entrain and

detrain men and guns--especially men. The town teems with troops.

The returning refugees trouble none of these officials. They go to the

French Mission for directions as to resettling.

As soon as you emerge on the eastern side of Arras you see the line

from the rising ground. The captive balloons mark it well; they are

so frequent--huge hovering inflations with the tiny observer's basket

dangling, and the streaming pennon half-way down the cable to avert

collision with the patrolling aircraft. For they must be patrolled

well. The Hun has lately the trick of pouncing on them from aloft,

shooting the tracer bullet as he dives. The tracer will put the thing

in flames in the twinkling of an eye. The observer does not wait if

he sees a Hun coming for him. He leaps for it. His parachute harness

is always about his shoulders, and his parachute tucked beneath the

balloon. But even with the Hun making for him, this leap into space is

a fearsome thing. He falls sheer for some seconds before the parachute

is wrenched from its place. Then there is that second of horrible

uncertainty as to whether she will open. And if there is a hitch, his

dive to earth becomes a flash and his breathless body thuds into pulp

below. So ended the man who "made" the song "Gilbert the Filbert." So

end others, failed by their parachute.... Sometimes combustion is so

rapid that the parachute is burnt with the balloon; then he leaps from

the death by fire to death of another sort. Nor does a well-released

parachute always let you down lightly. If the wind is strong and

contrary, you may drift five miles and land 'midst Huns. If the wind is

strong and favourable, your pendulic swing beneath the parachute may

land you roughly with wounds and bruises. You may be smashed against

chimneys, torn by trees, dragged through canals, and haled bleeding up

the bank. But if the Lord is with you, you will swing slowly down in

the still air and be landed tenderly in a field of clover.

Sometimes balloons get set afire by lightning. If then the parachute is

saved, the observer is fortunate indeed. Lightning gives rather less

warning to leap than does the flying Hun.

All the country from Arras to the line bears the scars of recent

fighting. A great deal of it bears the marks of German occupation; you

see this in German _Verboten_ signs and in German canteen notices.

The dwellings of the eastern suburbs lie in ruined heaps of brick;

there may be the ground-plan indicated by the low, rugged remnant of

wall. A jagged house-end may still lean there forlornly, with the

branches of the springing trees thrusting through its cracks and the

spring vines trailing through its shell-rents. With the spring upon it,

the whole landscape is more pathetic than in the bareness of winter.

This ruination sorted better with leafless boughs and frozen ground.

The sweet lush grass smiling in the interstices of ruin is hard to

look on. The slender poplar aspiring with tapering grace above the

red and grey wreckage is the more beautiful thereby, but the wreckage

is more hideously pathetic. It would break your heart to see the

pear-tree blossoming blithely in the rubble-strewn area that was once

its orchard. The refugee who returns will know (or perhaps he will not)

that in place of this _débris_ of crunched brick, splintered beam,

twisted iron, convulsed barbed wire, strewn about the trenches and

shell-holes of his property, was once the ordered quietness of orchard

and garden--his ranks of pear and apple, trim paths, shrubberies, the

gay splashes of flower-colour and carpeted softness of lawn. This

will wring his heart more than the loss of furniture. Though much of

his furniture was heirloom, this little orchard and garden were the

fruit of his own twenty years of loving nurture. This little area he

idealised as his farmed estate, his stately _parc_. Here on Sabbath

evenings he walked down the shrubbed paths with his wife and children,

after returning from the weekly promenade of the streets of Arras. His

children romped on the lawn since they could crawl. Now not only is it

gone, but its associations too--torn by shell, defiled by trenches,

desecrated by the cruel contortions of rusting wire. The zigzagged clay

parapet winds about his well-beloved plots; the ruins of a machine-gun

emplacement lie about the remnant of his summer-house; beef-tins,

jam-tins, and undischarged hand-grenades, are strewn beneath his

splintered shade-trees. The old sweet orchard air is defiled by the

sickening, indefinable stink of a deserted trench; the broken sandbags

lie greening about the turf.

This is all ruin of a sort more or less inevitable. Follow the road

winding down the valley beyond the suburb, and you will see the foul,

deliberate ruin of whole avenues of trees that once lined the route.

You know how these stately elm and beech met overhead for leagues

along the pleasant roads of France; there they lie now naked in the

turf by the road-side, untimely cut down by the steam-saw of the

Hun. He traversed the whole length of this road with that admirable

German thoroughness of his and felled them all across it to bar our

progress. The shattering of Arras Cathedral was necessary; this is mere

expediency, and near to wantonness. Forty years of stately growth lie

there gaunt and sapless. Soon you will see the tender tufts of green

spring from the smooth-cut stump. They have been beautifully cut:

German machinery is unimpeachably efficient. McAndrew's song of steam

is the noble celebration of the triumph of human mechanical genius;

these bleeding stumps are the monument that will testify for half a

century to the blasphemous misapplication of German mechanical skill.

The steam-saw must have worked beautifully. You can conceive the German

N.C.O. in charge of it standing by emitting approval as the stately

beech crashed across the road from the fine, smooth cut--"_Schön!...

Schön!_" ...

This will hurt the French more than other peoples think; they are so

proud of their forestry; they plant with such considerate foresight

into the pleasure that posterity will have in their trees--with such

prevision as to the arrangement of plantations and as to the _tout

ensemble_ of the avenue and the _forêt_ when the trees shall be mature.

A tree is nothing until you have personified it: the French personify

the trees of their private plantations; they are like members of the

_famille_. And such is the State care of forestry that you almost

believe it has personified the State plantations in a collective

sort of way, regarding them almost as a branch of society or of the

nation. The national care of trees is with them a thing analogous to

the administration of orphanages. The German will have reckonings to

make after the War for maimed and murdered trees and for annihilated

orchards, as well as for fallen and deformed Frenchmen....

After the trenches of Anzac, you are overwhelmed in France with the

pathos of the contiguity of trench with dwelling. It is less unnatural

that the unpeopled wilderness of Anzac should be torn by shell and

scarred by trench-line. In France there is a piteous incongruity in

the intimacy of warfare with domesticity. The village that has been

the stronghold is shattered beyond all reviving; and inevitably the

villages of the fighting area have been used as a fleeting shelter

from the fierceness of the tempest of shell. _L'Église_ is a roofless

ruin. _L'Hôtel de Ville_ and _la Marie_ are amorphous masses of jagged

and crumpled wall. The trenches traverse the street and the garden and

the _cour de maison_. The tiny rivulet on the outskirts of the village

has been hailed as a sort of ready-made trench and hastily squared and

fire-stepped. The farm is pocked with shell-holes; the farmhouse is

notoriously open to the heavens and gaping about the estate through its

rent walls. On Anzac only the chalk ridges were scored and the stunted,

uncertain growth uprooted; there were not even trees to maim. Here the

cellars are natural dug-outs in the trench-wall; the _maison_ is the

billet for the reserve battalion; the communication trench ploughs

rudely through the quiet cobbled street. The desecrating contrast cries

from the ground at every turn. The village that used to sleep in the

sun with its pleasant crops about it now sleeps in ashes and ruination

for ever. The battle-lines of Turkey will be effaced and overgrown by

the seasons, but that which was a village in France will never more

know the voices of little children again in its streets, because it has

no streets, and because new villages will be built rather than this

hideousness overturned and effaced and built-upon afresh.

If you walk east an hour from Arras you'll get near enough to Tilloy to

see the shelling of our line. Again Anzac is superseded. Anzac never

saw shell of this size (except from the monitors that bombarded from

the sea); nor did Anzac know bombardment of this intensity, except in

isolated spurts. Here the normal bombardment is intense. This is mere

routine; but it's as fierce as preceded any attack on Gallipoli. What

chance has the individual when modern artillery is at work? Yet the

chance of death cannot be greater than say, one in four; otherwise

there would be no men left. The rank of balloons is spotting; the

'planes are patrolling them; other 'planes are circling over our

batteries--spotting; others are going in squadron over the line--"on

some stunt," as Tommy puts it. Our own guns are speaking all about, so

loud that the noise of crowding transport is altogether drowned: by

them, and by the crack of the German bursts and by the shell-scream.

The transport on this road is not mechanical; we are too near the line

for that.

A German 'plane is being "archied" to the north, and there is a barrage

of "archies" being put up behind it to give our 'planes time to rise to

attack it. Two of them are climbing up to it now over our heads. They

climb very steep. They are very fast 'planes. They are on the level

of the Hun very quickly: they are above it. The barrage has ceased,

because the Hun is trying to risk running through rather than waiting

to fight two Nieuports. But one has intercepted him and is coming for

him in the direction of the line. The other is diving on him from

above. There is the spasmodic rattle of Lewis guns. The Hun is firing

thick on the man rushing him. He has done it, too; for suddenly our man

swerves and banks in a way that is plainly involuntary, and then begins

to fall, banking irregularly. Suddenly the flames begin to spurt from

her body. As suddenly she seems to regain control and dives steep for

earth, flames streaming from the wings and in a comet-tail behind. She

tears down at a horrible angle. Then you know in a moment that this is

not steering, but a nose-dive to death, and that it is controlled by no

pilot. We can hear the roar of flame. She is nearer to us, making for

us. She crashes horribly a hundred yards away and roars and crackles.

The delicate wings and body are gone long before we reach her; there is

only a quiet smouldering amongst the cracked and twisted frame, and the

sickening smell of burnt flesh and of oil-fumes.

The Hun has escaped--at least, we fear he will escape. He and our other

man are small specks in the blue above the German line. They cannot

"archie" them together. Our man turns, and grows. Then he gets it--the

deadly white puffs on every hand of him. But he comes through, and

proceeds to patrol.

SECTION C.--FRENCH PROVINCIAL LIFE

CHAPTER I

A MORNING IN PICARDY

The beginning of spring in Northern France is elating above the month

of May in the Rhône Valley--not because spring in Southern France is

not more beautiful, but because it is less welcome. It is by comparison

that the loveliness of the Picardy spring takes hold upon you: by

comparison with the bitterness of the Picardy winter. You may walk

about Marseilles or Lyon in January without a great-coat; in Arras this

would be the death of you. The frozen mud, the sleet, the snow, the

freezing wind, the lowering sky, and the gaunt woods of Pas de Calais,

are ever with you, from September to April. But by the beginning of May

the leaves are sprouting and the greening of the earth is begun. There

is rain--much of it. But there are sunny days without the bitterness

of wind. There is singing of birds in the early morning. The children

no longer creep along the frozen street to school; they race, and fill

the street with their laughter. The 'planes whose hum fills the air

look less forbidding than they seemed a month ago. In February, in the

darkening heaven, they showed a relentless aspect; they seem to fly

now as though at sport. The old _citadelle_ has lost its grimness; the

ramparts are greening; the shade of blackness taken on by its grey

slate-roofs when the trees were leafless is gone now; the moat that was

a pool of mud is flowering.

The Authie flows below it, full-tided. The margin now is not snow. It

has been snow for long, and half the stream was murky snow-slush. Now

it is clear. The ducks from the château that looks up at the Citadelle

are sporting in it again.

Saint-Pol Road, Amiens Road, Arras Road, are beginning to stand grey

again. In the winter there was nothing but their bare trees to mark

them; they were the colour of the fields. Now both trees and fields

foil them, setting out over the slopes.

It is a joy to walk down the Authie on a spring morning. The Citadelle

towers above you on the left. You are conscious of its graceful

immensity long after you have passed it. The little French cottages

straggle down-stream from the Citadelle base. They are white and grey,

red and white--French in construction from their tiny dormer windows

to the neat little gardens with their bricked-up margins flushed by

the stream. Long tree-lined boulevardes start away from the road which

skirts the river; you can see for many kilometres along their length.

The wine-barrels are piled beneath the plane-trees. The children play

about them. You will come upon a château standing stately in its low

ground fronting the river. And beyond the château, which marks the

border of the town, you are in the richness of the river fields and

the river slopes. Here are the elm-groves, and the clumps of soaring

poplar, and the long lines of stubby willow clipped yearly by the hand

of industry; they sprout long and delicate from the head. _Groseille_

and hop tangle about the bank. Far off on the ridges the white road

traverses under its elms, picking a way among the hedged terraces. You

see no denizens here other than the old men and the girls who are at

work in the fields. From them you will have a cheery "_Bonjour_" and

some shrewd remarks on the weather: "_Ah, oui!--toujours le travail,

m'sieur--toujours! Mais ça ne fait rien: nous sommes contents--oui._"

And so they are.

Then you come to Gezaincourt. That fine old château in its _parc_. The

_parc_ is of many acres, and there are deer in the woods of it, and a

lake where the wild-fowl are.

To return we left the river and struck up into the ridge. We came to

Bretel, midway between Gezaincourt and the Citadelle. We entered a

private _maison_ standing back in its garden; it was, none the less,

marked _café_. Madame received us unprofessionally, inviting into

the kitchen to drink. There she was preparing the dinner. _Je ne

sais pas pourquoi_--but the French are deliciously friendly with the

Australians. They take us into their homes with a readiness that is

elating. They will not do it with the English. But, after all, they

are frank, and we approach them frankly. We are given to domesticity,

and they are intensely domestic. Indeed, the Australian temperament is

far nearer to the French than is the English. The Australian tendency

to the spirit of democracy finds sympathy in the provinces of this

splendid Republic. The national spirit of democracy has its counterpart

(may even have its roots) in the local trend towards communism which,

in France, makes you welcome to enter the _maison_, chatting easily

about its domestic affairs, and, in Australia, makes you welcome in

the house of the country stranger, where you drink and eat without

embarrassment at the hospitable table for the first and last time. The

Australian is guiltless of the habitual industry of the French--of

their intense interest in the detail of their lives and work; but he

has their unconventionality and their lightness of heart and their

hospitality. He understands their communistic way of life in the

provinces. And when a French girl on a country road looks him directly

in the eye for the first time, and with the smile of friendly frankness

gives him a "_Bonjour, m'sieur_," he is no more embarrassed than she.

He meets and returns the greeting with an understanding of which an

Englishman knows nothing. The French and the Australians are allies by

nature. There is nothing amazing in their immediate understanding of

each other. How, on the other hand, the English and the French continue

to do anything in conjunction is a source of continual wonder. Between

their temperaments there is a great gulf fixed.

So Madame takes us direct to the kitchen, where she is basting. She

makes exhaustive inquiries into the Australian methods of cooking. We

explain that the foods are largely the same--but in the mode, _quelle

différence_! She thinks the Australian practice of the hearty breakfast

an extraordinary beginning to the day. The drinking of tea she cannot

away with: wine and _cidre_ are the only fluids to be taken with

food--or without it. She prefers beef to horse; it is in Normandy they

eat so much horse. We express approval of the French universal usage

of butter in cooking: they fry their eggs in butter, roast their meat

with it, fry potatoes in it. She asks what is our substitute for it.

Lard and dripping. "_O, la la! Quel goût!_" And so it is; Australians

know little of the blessings of butter in cookery. She asks if we are

fond of salads. "Up to a point, yes; but not as you are." "_En France,

toujours la salade, m'sieur! Regardez le jardin._" She takes us to the

window and indicates the vegetable-garden with a proud forefinger:

"_Voulez-vous vous promener?_"--"_Oui, madame, avec plaisir._"

"_Madeleine!_" She calls her daughter. Madeleine is a comely girl who

has been at work in the next room. She shakes hands as though she had

known us as boys, and fills up the glasses again before we go out, and

takes one herself with the grace of a lady. For high-bred ease and

graciousness of manner, in fact, you are to go to the _demoiselles_

of the provinces. "_A votre santé, m'sieur._" She raises her glass

and smiles--as well as enunciates--the toast. "_A votre santé,

mademoiselle!_" "_A la paix, madame!_" "_Bonne santé!_"--"_Oui, à la

paix, messieurs!--nécessaire, la paix!_" ...

Madeleine leads the way into the garden. It is clear at once to what

degree the French are addicted to salads: canals of water-cress, fields

of lettuce and radish and celery. Most of the plants in that garden

are potentially plants for a salad. But there are some fine beds of

asparagus, and of these _le père_ is proud. He is obviously pleased

to meet anyone who is interested by his handiwork. It's politic even

to feign an exaggerated interest in every plot; you are rewarded by

the old man's enthusiastic pride: "_Ah, messieurs, le printemps s'est

éveillé! Bon pour le jardin!_" We finish by the rivers of water where

the cress grows. "_Regardez la source_," says Madeleine. She points

to it oozing from the hill-side. They have diverted it and irrigated a

dozen canals each thirty yards long and two wide. There is more cress

there than the whole village could make into salads, you say. But three

housewives come with their bags, buying, and each takes such a generous

load of the _cresson_ that you know the old man has not misjudged his

cultivation.

"_Voulez-vous une botte de cresson, messieurs?_"--"_Oui, s'il vous

plait, m'sieur: merci bien!_" The old fellow places his little bridge

across the canal, cuts a bundle, and binds it from the sheaf of dried

grass at his waist. "_Voilà, messieurs!_"

The purchasers stop far longer than is necessary to talk about the War

and the price of sugar and the scarcity of _charbon_. Conversation is

the provincial hobby, as it is the national hobby. Yet I have never

seen the French mutually bored by conversation--never. Nor are there,

in French conversation, those stodgy gaps which are to be expected in

the conversation of the English, and, still more, of the Australians.

French conversation flows on; _ebbs and flows_ expresses better not

only the knack of apt rejoinder which gives it perfect naturalness, but

also the rhythmic rise and fall of it which makes it pleasant to hear,

even when you don't understand a word. That, and its perfect harmony of

gesture, make it a living thing, with all the interest of a thing that

lives.

We (unnecessarily, again) wander about the garden with Madeleine. She

gives the history of each plot. What interests us is to her a matter

of course: the extraordinary neatness of the garden, the uniformity

of plot, the assiduous exclusion of weeds, the careful demarcation of

paths, the neatness of the all-surrounding hedge. The French genius for

detail and for industry shows itself nowhere so clearly as in a garden.

They are gardeners born.

On returning to the house, madame insists that we stay to dinner. We

accept without hesitation. _Le père_ comes in and brings the dogs.

Soon we know their history from puppyhood. _Finu_ is morose and

jealous; she has a litter of pups that make her unfriendly. _Koko_ is

a happy chap--always a friend to soldiers, as the old man puts it.

He is a _souvenir_ left by a Captain of artillery. All this is, in

itself, rather uninteresting, but in the way in which it is put it is

absorbing. That, in fact, is the secret of the charm of most French

conversation. In the mouth of an Englishman--such is its trifling

detail--it would be deadly-boring. The French aptness and vividness of

description dresses into beauty the most uninteresting detail.

It soon appears that the whole family are refugees from Arras; have

lived here two years. I told them I had recently visited Arras. This

flooded me with questions. I wish I had known the detailed geography of

Arras better. The narrative of a recent Arras bombardment moved them to

tears. They love their town: they love more than their home. This is

the spirit of the Republic. The Frenchman's affection for his town is

as strong as the Scotchman's for his native heath.

They had brought from Arras all their worldly goods. They took us

to the sitting-room and to the bedroom. Much of the furniture was

heirlooms. Each piece had its age and history. The carved oak wardrobe

was extremely fine; it had belonged to madame's great-grandmother.

Chairs, table-covers, pictures--all were treasured. Here was more

evidence to expose the fallacy that French family life is decaying.

Gentle reader, never believe it. Family history is as sacred in the

provinces as natural affection is strong: which is to say much.

But the typical French family heirloom is antique plate. This takes the

form of china and porcelain embellished with biological and botanical

design. Some of it is very crude and ugly, but dear to the possessor.

Every French _salle à manger_ has a wall-full; they are in the place of

pictures.

The dinner was elaborate and delicious. No French _famille_ is so poor

that it does not dine well: soup, fish with _salade_, veal with _pommes

de terre frites_, fried macaroni with onions, prunes with custard,

coffee and cigars. This--except for the cigars, perhaps--was presumably

a normal meal. And between each course Madeleine descended the _cave_

and brought forth a fresh bottle of _cidre_. And Madeleine's glass was

filled by her parent, with a charming absence of discrimination, as

often as ours--or as her mother's. The colour mounted in her cheeks;

but she did not talk drivel. To generous draughts of wine and _cidre_

had she been accustomed from her youth up. And the youngest French

child will always get as much as Madeleine to drink at table. So the

French are not drunkards.

After lunch came two visitors to talk. They were sisters, friends of

Madeleine. For two years and a half they had been prisoners in a French

town held by the Germans, near Albert, and had been liberated only

a month before by the German evacuation. They told pitiful tales of

German ill-usage, though not of a physiological nature. But constantly

the Boches demanded food and never paid, so that they themselves went

hungry daily. Also, they worked for Germans under compulsion, and never

were paid; and worked very hard. The German soldiers they described

as not unkind, though discourteous, but the officers were invariably

brutal. _Maintenant vous êtes chez nous_ was the German officers'

formula, with its implied threat of violation; which was never

executed, however.

We rose to go, and made to pay. This was smiled at indulgently. "_Au

revoir, messieurs! Bonne chance!_" cried _le père_. "_Quand vous

voudrez_," said Madame. "_Quand vous voudrez_," echoed Madeleine. So we

went--like Christian--on our way rejoicing.

CHAPTER II

THÉRÈSE

I was sitting on a log at the crest of the splendidly high La Bouille

ridge gloating over the Seine Valley. Here, from the grounds of _La

Maison Brûlée_ (now raucous with revellers in the late afternoon) you

have a generous sweep of the basin and of its flanking forest slopes.

A Frenchman and his wife sauntered past with their daughter and took

a seat beyond. The daughter was beautiful, with an air of breeding

that sorted well with the distinguished bearing of the old man and the

well-sustained good looks of her mother. They sat for half an hour, and

as they re-passed on the return mademoiselle said: "How do you like the

view?" in excellent English. This was justification enough for inviting

them to share my log. We talked a long time, mademoiselle and I; the

old people hadn't a word of English. She had had a two years' sojourn

in Birmingham about the age of sixteen, and had acquired good English

ineradicably. She had got caught into Joseph Chamberlain's circle; he

used to call her Sunny Jim. The name sat well upon her: the facetious

aptness of it was striking. She was of the "fire and dew" that make up

the admirable French feminine lightness of spirit-vivacity, frankness,

sunniness, whimsicality, good looks, and litheness of body.

The end of it all was that I was to come down to Sahurs (over the

river) the next Sunday and see their home and get taught some French in

an incidental fashion. There was no manner of doubt of every need of

that.

And there was no manner of hesitancy in accepting such an invitation.

She flashed a smile behind as they left, and I resumed the log, wishing

to-morrow were Sunday, as distinct from Monday. This was a damnable

interval of waiting. As I was repeating this indictment over and over,

watching them disappear into the forest, she waved. I lapsed into a

profane silence, and brooded on the flight of time, and reviewed in

turn all the false allegations of its swiftness I could call to mind.

It was obviously wise to leave the margin of this darkling wood and

get down to the boat. It would never do to miss it, and be driven to

crossing to Sahurs to tell them so. No! that wouldn't do: better catch

the thing and be done with it. So I did; and had a journey of easy

contemplation up to Rouen.

Next Sunday I got a "bike": it can be made to leave earlier than the

boat. And the river-bank is more interesting than the middle-stream.

From Rouen to Sahurs the right bank of the Seine is bulwarked by a

traversing limestone ridge, clothed with forest. But the river-side

is escarped and precipitous, thrusting out its whiteness beneath the

forest crest and, as a foil, casting up the châteaux and splendid

_maisons_ on the river level, with their embracing gardens and orchards.

This rich accumulation of colour--deep forest, gleaming cliff-side, red

roof, grey mellow wall, and blooming garden and orchard, and white

river road--is unforgettable, and perhaps unexcelled. Nothing finer

you'll see in the whole Rhône Valley; and that is a bold saying.

The especial charm of a cycle is that you can stop and look. You can

gaze as long as you like (as long as is consistent with the fact

that Sunny Jim is at the other end of the journey) at this quaint

half-timbered, gable-crowded _maison_ standing in its graceful

poplar-grove; at the sweet provincial youngsters playing on the road.

You can lay up your machine and enter the rambling Normandy café

squatting on the river-bank, with its groups of blue-clad soldiers _en

permission_ making the most of things with the bloused and pantalooned

civilians and with their cider (_cidre_ is the national drink of

Normandy, as wine is of most other provinces) and you are greeted, in

such a house, with the delicious open French friendliness which is so

entrancing (by contrast) to most Englishmen. After their own national

reticence, this is pleasant beyond description. Of some it is the

undoing. The soldiers greet you, and you are adamantine if you don't

sit at their table rather than alone. The girl who serves welcomes you

like a brother. Quite sorry you are, at rising, you never came here

before.... You push on with your wheel. On the slopes of the other bank

they are getting in the harvest on the edge of the wood--some old men

and many women and a handful of soldiers on leave who have forgotten

the trenches.

There are soldiers with their families fishing on the bank beside you

at intervals. You stop to talk to these. You can't resist sitting with

them for a spell and kissing the little girls who nestle up. The

basket that contains other things than bait and the catch is opened;

you're a villain if you don't sip from that yellow bottle and take some

bread and a handful of cherries....

Halfway to Sahurs, opposite the timbered island, you pass the German

prisoners' camp, patrolled, beneath the barbed wire topping the wall,

by those quaint, informal French sentries. They're in red-and-blue

cap, red-and-blue tunic, red-and-blue breeches. They lounge and chat

and dawdle, with their rifles slung across their backs, and their

prodigiously long bayonets poking into the upper air. They appear

casual enough, but they detest the generic German sufficiently to leave

you confident that, however casual they may seem, he will not escape.

Farther down, you'll meet a gang of Boches road-making--fine, brawny,

light-haired, blue-eyed, cheerful beggars they are. Obviously they

don't aspire above their present lot so long as wars endure.

Four kilometres above Sahurs is the Napoleonic column marking the spot

where the ashes of Bonaparte were landed between their transfer from

the boat which brought them up the river to that which bore them to

Paris. As I approached this column from above, Sunny Jim, on her wheel,

approached it from Sahurs. Her friend Yvonne was with her (wonderful,

in this land, is the celerity with which the barriers surrounding

Christian names are thrown down!), and the dog.

The ride on to Sahurs is on a road that deflects from the river. It is

over-arched with elms continuously. Thérèse (that's her name) calls it

_la Cathédrale_: and the roof of branches aloft is like the groined

roof of a cathedral.

M. Duthois and madame come out to meet you. It's a welcome and a half

they give--none of your English polite formulas and set courtesy. A

warm, human, thoroughgoing sincerity sweeps you into the hall, and

there you stand in a hubbub of greeting and interrogation (of which

less than half is intelligible: but no matter!) for ten minutes,

everyone too busy talking to move on, until Thérèse suggests we go

round the garden and the orchard.

Everyone goes.

Thérèse gives us the French for every flower and shrub to be seen,

and the old man makes valiant, clumsy attempts at English, and you

make shamelessly clumsy attempts at French. One evidence of the

thoroughgoing courtesy of the French is that they will never laugh

at your attempts at their language. We smile at them: somehow their

English is amusing. Possibly the reason they do not smile at us

attempting French is that there is nothing at all amusing in our

flounderings--more likely to irritate than amuse. The old man is

accommodating in his choice of topics that will interest you and be

intelligible--accommodating to the point of embarrassment. He talks

quite fifteen minutes about the shape and coloration of your pipe,

certain that this will interest the selfish brute. Madame doesn't say a

word--carries on a sort of conversation with smiles and other pantomime.

Somehow, in the garden (I don't know how) Yvonne got named _Mme. la

Comtesse_ by M. Duthois. This for the time being embarrassed her into

complete and blushing silence because we all took it up. All manner

of difficulties were referred to the superior wisdom of _la Comtesse_.

It was she who must decide as to the markings of the aeroplane humming

up in the blue; the month when the red currants would be ripened; the

relationship of the two crows croaking in the next field; the term of

the War's duration.

But an authority on this last subject now emerged from the wicket-gate

which opened from the neighbouring house. Madame ---- had taken Thérèse

to Alsace after her return from Birmingham, and had taught her to speak

German there. Madame had lived in Alsace three years before, and spoke

German very well indeed. She related in German her dream-message of

the night before, that fixed the duration of the War unquestionably at

three months more. This subconscious conviction was so conclusive for

her that she would take bets all round. Thérèse staked all her ready

cash. No doubt she will collect about Christmas-tide.

We all went on to tea spread in the orchard, and spread with an

unerring French sense of fitness: such a meal, that is, as would be

spread in the orchard but not in the house--French rolls and dairy

butter, and _confiture de groseille_ made from the red currants of the

last season, fruit and cream, Normandy cake, cherries, wafers, and

_cidre_ sparkling like champagne, bearing no relationship whatever to

the flat, insipid green-and-yellow fluid of the Rouennaise hotels.

There was no dulness at table. French conversation flows easily and

unintermittently. There were tussles to decide whether Thérèse should

or should not help herself first. The English custom of "ladies first"

is looked on as rather stupid, with its implied inferiority of women:

"But you will not beat me! _Mais oui!_ but you are very obstinate!" And

she would not be beaten; for she said she didn't like Normandy cake

(though she adored it), and helped herself generously when it had been

round, and proclaimed her victory over English convention with a little

ripple of triumph. _Après vous_ became a mirth-provoking password.

All the pets came round the table--the fowls (to whom I was introduced

singly; they all have their names); _Mistigri_ the cat, _Henri_

the goose, the pigeons, the pug, the terrier. All these you are

expected to make remarks to, on introduction, as to regular members

of the family--which they are, in effect: "_Bon jour, Henri! Comment

allez-vous? Parlez-vous anglais? Voulez-vous vous asseoir?_" When these

introductions are over, M. Duthois brings forth his tiny bottle of

1875--the cognac he delights in.

Thérèse proposes a walk. Shall it be down by the river or through the

village? "_Both_," you say. So we go by the river and return by the

hamlet.

Setting out, Thérèse pledges me to the French tongue alone, all the

way. If I don't undertake to speak no English, I cannot go walking,

but must sit with her in the summer-house behind the orchard and learn

French with a grammar. I at once decline so to undertake. She varies

the alternative: she will not reply if I speak in English. Well, no

matter: that's no hardship. She forgets the embargo when she squelches

a frog in the grass. English is resumed at once. She is led on to a

dissertation in English upon frogs as a table-dish. This leads to

talk of other French table abnormalities--horse as preferred to ox,

the boast of French superiority in salads and coffee, the outlandish

French practice of serving your _pommes de terre_ after meat; and such

carnal topics.

Pappa wanders ahead at an unreasonable pace with _Mme. la Comtesse_.

Thérèse and I set about gathering daisies and poppies, with which the

green is starred. The dogs come out from the neighbouring farmhouse;

and Thérèse, who fears dogs horribly, has to be adequately protected.

We come up with pappa on the river-bank. We all set off dawdling

single-file along the brush-hemmed river-path.... The Normandy twilight

has settled down; but it will last till ten. La Bouille lies on the

other shore under the cliffs that gleam through their foliage. The

river gleams beneath them. There is a long track of light leading to

the ridge at the bend where the tottering battlements of the castle

of Robert le Diable stand against the sky-line. A hospital ship, now

faintly luminous, lies under the shadow of the la Bouille ridge. The

village lights have begun to twinkle on the other shore. The soft cries

of playing children creep over the water. The cry of the ferryman ready

to leave is thrown back from the cliffs with startling clearness. The

groves that fringe the cliff are cut out branch by branch against the

ruddy sky.

We don't want to talk much after coming on the river: neither do we....

It has darkened palpably when we turn to enter the village, an

hour after. The hedged lanes are dark under the poplar-groves. The

latticed windows of the cottages are brilliant patchwork of light. The

glow-worms are in the road-side grass and in the hedges. We pluck them

to put them in our hats. Thérèse weaves all manner of wistful fancies

about them. We pass under the Henry VIII. _église_ to the house, and

enter quietly.

Thérèse sits at the piano without stupid invitation, and sings some

of the lovely French folk-songs, and (by a special dispensation) some

German, that are almost as haunting. The old man watches his daughter

with a sort of fearful adoration, as though this creature, whose spirit

gleams through the fair flesh of her, were too fine a thing for him to

be father of.

Between the songs we talk. There is cake and wine--that and the

common-sensed sallies of _Mme. la Comtesse_ to restrain the romance and

the sensuousness of the warm June Normandy night.

I left at midnight. We said an _au revoir_ under the porch; and far

down the road came floating after the dawdling wheel a faint "_Au

'voir ... à Dimanche_"--full of a sweet and friendly re-invitation to

all this. I registered an acceptance with gratitude for the blessings

of Heaven, and wandered on along the white night road for Rouen. Why

hasten through such a night? Rouen would have been pardoned for being

_twice_ ten miles distant. The silent river, the gleaming road, the

faintly rustling trees, and the warm night filled with the scents of

the Forêt de Roumare, forbade fatigue and all reckoning of hours....

And that was the blessed conclusion of most Sabbath evenings for three

months.

CHAPTER III

LEAVES FROM A VILLAGE DIARY

_Sunday, --th._--This morning a Taube came over our village, dropping

bombs. They all fell in the neighbouring wood. Our aircraft defences

made a fervent response, but ineffectual.

At 6.30 this evening I counted eighteen of our 'planes flying home.

They have a facetious trick of shutting off their engines high and far

from home and floating down on resistance. It's curious watching a

'plane suddenly dissociated from the raucous buzz of its engine.

To-night the whole eastern sky is illuminated as though by summer

lightning in which there are no intervals--an unintermittent flap-flap.

The din is tremendous and heart-shaking. This is war--"and no error."

Anzac was hard. The country was rough and untenable--a hell, in our

strip, of lice, stinks, flies, mal-nutrition and sudden death. Food

was repulsive, and even so you did not get as much as you desired. You

got clean in the Ægean at peril of your life. Here, on the other hand,

is fighting-space gentle and smiling--a world of pastures, orchards,

streams, groves, and white winding roads, with room to sanitate and

restrain plagues. There is an over-generous ration of food that tempts

you to surfeit; Expeditionary Force canteens, as well stocked as a

London grocer's, as far up as the riskiest railhead; snug farmhouse

billets, with un-infested straw; hot baths behind the lines; cinemas

for resting battalions. But Anzac never knew the relentlessness of this

offensive fighting. There we faced an enemy with whom fighting was a

hobby, taken sportingly, if earnestly. Here we wrestle at sweaty and

relentless grips with a foe to whom the spirit of sport is strange

and repulsive, and who never had a sense of humour; who fights hating

blindly and intensely. Most days you could not jab a pin between the

gun-belches. You feel the whole world is being shaken, and, if this

goes on for long, will crumble in a welter of blood and hate. It cannot

last at this rate: that's the assurance that rises day by day and hour

by hour within you. But the assurance is melancholy: how much of either

side is going to survive the intensity of it? What will be the state,

when all is over, of the hardly-victorious?

_Monday, --th._--To-day, in nine hours, three divisions were rushed

through this town for the ---- sector. They came in motor-'buses. At

twelve miles an hour they tore through the astonished streets, which

got themselves cleared quickly enough. The military police tried to

restrain the pace. They were French 'buses driven by Frenchmen who had

got a fever of excited speed in their blood. They cleared the military

police off the route with impatient gestures, as one waves aside an

impertinence.... This is mobility.

Feverish processions of this kind are altogether apart from battalions

marching, cavalry clattering, engineers lumbering. A fifteen-inch gun,

distributed over five steam tractors, goes through at midnight with

flares and clamour. One trusts that such engines offer compensation

for their unwieldiness, for that is incredible: five gigantic tractors

_with_ trailers, to move one of them at this strident snail's pace. The

nine-point-two's are accommodated each on one tractor. The field-guns,

tossed on to waggons, hurry through, toys by comparison.

_Tuesday, --th._--I was on the ---- Road this morning in the gusty

drizzle. A column of artillery was moving towards ----. It was

miserable weather for horsed-transport. All the men had wry-necks, with

the list against the wind. The flanks of the officers' horses were

overspread by the voluminous waterproof cape. At ---- there was a horse

column encamped. Nothing could appear more miserable than the dejected

horse lines in the sea of mud--manes and draggle-tails blown about in

the murk.

A party of ineligible Frenchmen were road-patching near ----. The

main roads have them at work always. They fill the holes and minute

valleys that military traffic makes continuously. Lorry-holes are

insidious things. They magnify at an astonishing rate if left for

two days. They must be treated at once. The gangs move up and down

the roads with mobile loads of earth and gravel, treating all the

depressions and maintaining a surface tolerable for Colonels' cars.

(You can judge the freight of a car by its speed; the pace of Majors

is slightly less fierce than that of Colonels. Brigadiers make it

killing.) The road-menders get in where they can between the flights.

It's a disjointed business, and a mucky one, this weather. A Colonel's

car-wheels spurt into the green fields. The gangers get mottled with

the thin brown fluid. They are a pathetically decrepit folk--men too

old or infirm for the trenches and boys who are too young. But this

work, in this weather, carries a test almost as severe as that of

trench-warfare.

The road-signs--admonitory, hortatory, prohibitive--are raised at very

frequent intervals. Military routes behind the lines are in a state of

continual flux--to such a degree that road-maps are not only useless,

but misleading, to drivers of vehicles. Their best course is to ignore

the map, watch the road-directions as they are approached, and use

their horse-sense. Signs are quite explicit: "Closed to lorries and

ambulances"; "Closed to traffic in this direction" (arrowhead). The

distance and direction of every village, however small, is put up with

a clearness that excludes the possibility of error. The location of

every ammunition-dump, supply-dump, railhead, camping-ground, billeting

area, watering-place, intelligence Headquarters, motor-tyre press (an

institution much in demand), is indicated very exactly. Most other

signs are designed to regulate speed: "Maximum speed through village

---- for lorries and ambulances, ---- for light tractors, ---- for

cars"; "Danger: cross-roads"; "Lorry-park; slow down"; "Go slow past

aerodrome to avoid injuring engines through dust." (Can you conceive

British administration in the Army giving the reason, thus, for an

order?)

Some French signs persist: _Attention aux trains._

Some signs are not official: "Level crossing ahead: keep your

blood-shot eyes open."

The village streets show signs that have no reference to speed. Most

estaminets publish "English Stout"; "Good beer 3d., best beer 4d.";

"Officers' horses, 10"; "Cellar, 50"--_i.e._, we have a cellar that

will billet fifty men. The villages are very quiet and old-time--grey

and yellow walls abutting directly on the roads (footpaths are

unknown); thatch or slate roofs; low windows from which, sitting, your

feet would touch road; tortuous streets; plentiful girl and women

denizens; a wayside Calvary on the outskirts; a church spire rising

somewhere from the roofs; a preponderance of taverns, estaminets,

cafés, and sweet-shops in the chief street.

_Wednesday, --th._--I got some notion this morning of life on the

ambulance trains. They move between railhead and the bases with the ebb

and flow of the offensive tide. After their load is discharged to a

base they garage at a siding erected in this station for the purpose,

and await orders. They may rest three days or three hours. Sisters

and M.O.'s have lived on the same train--some of them--for twelve or

fifteen months, but are too busy to be mutually bored. At the garage

you will see them dismounted from the train taking their lunch among

the hay-ricks in the harvested field beside the line. An orderly will

alight from the train and race across the field, and you'll see the

party rise, hastily pitch their utensils incontinently into a rug,

and climb aboard as the train steams out. The order has come to move

up again and "take on." ... This is one aspect of the state of flux

in which the world behind the lines stands day and night, month after

month.

At the _gare_ here is a canteen for _voyageurs_ exclusively. A blatant

and prohibitory notice says so with no uncertainty. This is English.

An English girl is in charge of it. She gets as little respite as the

_chef de gare_. Who can say when she sleeps? She is supplying tea and

cakes and cigarettes to troops every day and every night. No one is

refused at any hour, however unhallowed. French railway-stations on

the lines of communication all carry such an English girl for such a

purpose; and usually they are in the front rank of English aristocracy.

The English nobility have not spared themselves for "the Cause." Their

men have fallen thick; their women have resigned the luxury of their

homes to minister to the pain and the hunger of the force in France.

And they do it with a thoroughness apparently incompatible (though only

apparently so) with the thoroughgoing luxury and splendour of their

civilian way of life.

_Thursday, --th._--This afternoon I walked down the river that winds

through the town and goes south. It is a comfortable, easy-flowing

trout-stream. Beyond the town bridge it turns into pastures and

orchards and cultivated fields, nosing a way through stretches of brown

stubble, apple-groves, and plantations of beet. Groves of elm and

beech overspread the high grass on its brink. The hop clusters with

the wild-strawberry and the red currant: a solitary trouter stands

beyond the tangle. The fields slope gently away from the stream--very

gently--up to the tree-lined road on the ridge. The brown-and-gold

stubble rises, acre beyond acre, to the sky-line; and in the evening

light takes on a rich investiture of colour that is bold for stubble,

but not the less lovely because it is virtual only. As the evening

wears on, this settles into a softness of hue that you cannot describe.

Such is the Somme country: such is the land of war.

At nine to-night all the station lights were switched off. Advice

had come from ---- of enemy aircraft approaching this junction. They

did not come--not to our knowledge. But the _chef de gare_ waddled

over to his private house and bundled wife and children down into the

cellar--and _cave_, as they call it--and when he had seen them safely

stowed, returned to his station to await orders. The French girls and

women inhabit the cellar with alacrity at such times. Every house has

its funk-hole, for there is hardly a dwelling so small as to neglect

a vault for _cidre_ and _vin ordinaire_. "In the season" they lay up

a year's store; as a rule, the _cidre_ is home-brewed, too. At table

the jug goes round, filling the glass of the _enfant_ and the _père_

without discrimination. By the end of the meal the colour has mounted

in the cheeks of the little girls, and they are garrulous and the boys

noisy. Amongst the _cidre_ barrels there is good and secure cover from

Taubes.

When the lights got switched on again, the detraining of the ----th

Division resumed....

_Friday --th._--I was wakened at two o'clock this morning by the hum of

their collective conversation. Sergeants-major were roaring commands in

the moonlight; some of them were supplemented by remarks not polite.

Many English sergeants-major speak in dialect: most of them do. There

is something repellent about words of command issued in dialect. Why

can't England cut-out dialect? It's time it went. Dialect is a very

rank form of Conservatism. Why can't a uniform pronunciation of vowels

be taught in English schools? Active-service over a term of years will

perhaps help to bring about a standardising of English speech. One

hopes so....

I got up and looked out. As far as could be seen along any street,

and all over the square, was a faintly mobile sea of black on which

danced the glow of the cigarette (damnable, how the cigarette has put

out the pipe!). Detachments were still marching from the train to the

halting-places, and detachments were moving out momentarily on the

night march.

"Hark, I hear the tramp of thousands,

And of arméd men the hum."

They moved off--some to drum and fife band; some to the regimental

song; some to the regimental whistle; some to the unrhythmic

accompaniment of random conversation. The general impression they gave,

at two in the morning, was of an abnormal cheerfulness.

A French ambulance-train came in this afternoon crowded with slightly

wounded--sitting cases. They were immensely cheerful, though there was

not by any means sitting accommodation for all. These were all nice

light "Blighty" wounds; they meant respite from the dam'd trenches

without dishonour. The fellows were immensely cheered by this. They

were more like a train-load of excursionists than a body of wounded

warriors from a hell like the Somme. They had hundredweights of German

souvenirs. Most of it was being worn--helmets, tunics, arms, and the

like. I bought several pieces. They were not expensive. A French

Poilu's pay is _cinq sous_ (twopence ha'penny) per day: fifteen or

twenty francs means about three months' pay for him. He'll part with

a lot of souvenir for that. And he has such a bulk of it that a few

casques, trench daggers, rifles, and telescopic sights, more or less,

are neither here nor there.

The English girls who administer the _gare_ canteen move up and down

with jugs of coffee. They are thanked (embraced, if they'd stand it)

with embarrassing profusion.

_Saturday, --st._--Bombs were dropped in the Citadelle moat to-day. The

Citadelle is now a casualty clearing station. This is not incongruous

with its history. It was besieged in the fifteenth century. No doubt

there were casualties within it then--though, judging its defensive

properties at this distance of time, there were more without: many

more. It's tremendously strong still--an incredible depth of dry

moat, thickness of wall, and height of rampart surmounting it: outer

ramparts on three sides from which the defenders retired across the

bridges--still standing--after they had done their worst. And there

are bowels in the place from which galleries set out to neighbouring

villages whence reinforcements used to be brought up. You can walk

miles in these galleries beneath the Citadelle itself, without

journeying beneath the surrounding country; for the ground-plan of the

Citadelle is not small. A walk round the walls will lead you a mile and

a half, traversing buttresses and all: the buttresses bulge hugely into

the moat-bed.

The whole area is terraced, originally for strategic purposes. The

buildings are many and strong and roomy.

A fine hospital it happens to have made. The multiplicity of buildings

offers all a C.O. could ask in the way of distribution of wards

and facilities for segregation, and isolated buildings for stores,

messes, Sisters' quarters, officers' quarters, operating-theatres,

laboratories.

His convalescents can bask and promenade on the ramparts in the winter

sunshine, and stroll healthfully through the groves and about the paths

of the area. In the wide level, grassy, moat-basin the orderlies play

their football matches and the C.O. takes his revolver practice.

The ghastliness of the wards is all out of harmony with this. There is

a gas-ward, hideously filled--blackened faces above the ever-restless

coverlets. The surgical wards in a station so near the line hold the

grimmest cases--cases too critical for movement down to a base: head

wounds, abdominal wounds, spinal cases that can bear transport no

farther, and that have almost no hope of recovery as it is. Men plead

piteously here for the limbs that a cruelly-kind surgeon can do nothing

with but amputate. "Doctor, I've lost the arm; that won't be so bad if

you'll only leave the leg." The plea is usually put in this form, which

implies the power of choice in the M.O. between alternatives; whereas

the gangrenous limb leaves him no room for debate.

In a station so close, too, the operating-theatre cannot afford to be

either small or idle--no mere cubicle with two tables; but two large

wards with six tables each, and (when a push has been made in the line)

with every table in use late in the night: a bloody commentary on the

righteousness of war.

CHAPTER IV

THE CAFÉ DU PROGRÈS

The Café de Progrès stands in the Rue de ---- half-way down to the

river. It's the place where merchants most do congregate. The manager

of the Banque de ---- leads them. The place that the first bank manager

in the town frequents daily is thereby given a tone which no other café

in D---- can have. So it is the first among the lounging-places only.

That leads to a rough division of all the cafés in the town into two

great classes: those you lounge and drink in, and those to which you

go for a meal. In the one you will see the French relaxing (there are

some rich "retired" gentlemen who do nothing _but_ relax); in the other

you will see the English officer satisfying his hunger more or less

incontinently. Need I say which is the place of interest?

Our favourite seat used to be upon a small dais in recess overlooking

the billiard-table immediately and the whole room generally. Its only

disadvantage was that it did not overlook that other recess--separated

from it by a partition--in which Thérèse mixed the drinks and brewed

the coffee.

The billiard-table occupied one-half the room; the other half centred

round the stove. The tables were arranged in concentric circles about

it. The regular denizens of the place--the men who lived there--would,

during the snow, come early, occupy the innermost circle of tables,

and omit to move out until sundown. And sometimes they would stay far

into the night. The retired business-man is more amenable to a sense

of cosiness than any other mortal of his age. He would get Thérèse to

bring him snacks--they were not meals--at intervals during the day. And

there he would settle himself, with his boon companions, for twelve

hours on end.

Cards is the diversion: cards and dominoes. The habitual inner

circle there is made up by the proprietor, the ex-Mayor of the

town, _le directeur de la Banque de ----_, and the manager of the

_Usine de ----_. The last named used to have inscrutable spells of

absence--inscrutable until it was explained that the occasion was the

visit of M. ---- the elder, himself, from Paris--a man of iron and the

proprietor of the _Usine_. He it was who quelled with his own hand and

voice an ugly strike of his _ouvriers_ who dared ask for more money.

The ex-Mayor was never absent. He was a well preserved old dog whom

no severity of weather was allowed to keep from the post of duty by

the stove. The whole room was obsequious to him by force of habit. He

was the presiding genius over the café: he, rather than the proprietor

himself. He would come rolling in, and fairly rattle the glasses with

his "_Bonjour, messieurs!_" He usually walked over to the buffet before

seating himself, and, if so minded, greeted Thérèse with a fatherly

kiss, which she--poor girl!--thought dignified her; whereas Thérèse,

to be accurate, was worth far more than the embraces of this pompous

old aristocrat. With his intimates he shook hands noisily, and slapped

them on the back. The herd half-rose in its seat throughout the room

in traditional deference. I suspect it was the general obsequiousness,

rather than the interest of the game, or of the company, which brought

the old egoist here daily.

The _directeur_ of the bank is not worth considering. He was the

incarnation of obsequiousness. It was plain that he had habitually

sold his soul to patrons. And since it is likely that at one time the

ex-Mayor was his chief patron (and perhaps was so still), you will

believe that he was more slavish toward him than the humblest townsman

sipping his cognac. You almost looked for him to lick his master's

mighty hand.

The proprietor was a sinewy fellow who had been a soldier. It was

wounds he had had; which had not, however, incapacitated him for

vigorous action. Also, he had been a prisoner of war in Germany. These

German experiences he would recount to you with much wealth of gesture,

and a wealth of exaggeration too, if by chance--or by design--he were

drunk enough. He was in a state of perennial intoxication; at any hour

of any day or night it was only a question of degree.

In the game of cards in a French café the stake is superfluous.

Englishmen profess they require the stake to hold their interest.

Usually the French play with counters only. The interest of the game

is enough. It is a very voluble game with them. They excite themselves

seemingly beyond all reason. You might imagine them a nest of pirates,

inflamed with liquor, playing in some den of the sea with fair captives

for stakes. These French enthusiasts upset the drink by thumping down

their cards. They have rare disputes; but they are not quarrels.

Thérèse is the girl who carries drinks. She has dimples and a happy

smile. French girls are either very free or super-continent; there is

no middle course. Thérèse is of the latter class, but not puritanical.

Subalterns have been seen attempting to kiss her in the seclusion of

a recess. They have been routed. The only occasion on which Thérèse

allowed herself to be kissed was New Year's Day. Then it was general.

Everyone was doing it--in the street--the merest acquaintances. That

day Thérèse submits as a matter of course. That day, too, the ex-Mayor

gallantly embraced that old hag, her aunt, to the diversion of the

populace.

The aunt brews and dispenses behind the buffet. She objects to

Thérèse's loitering when she serves, even though loitering may be good

for trade. Thérèse describes her as a very sober-minded woman.

The billiard-table attracts a lot of attention--from onlookers as

well as from players. There the _directeur_ of the _banque_ plays his

chief accountant and drinks champagne and _grenadine_ between the

shots--a poisonous combination, that, but a popular. The French like

things sweet, and they like them definitely coloured. The _directeur_

is a handsome fellow, with a perfectly balanced head and a curiously

pleasing harmony of nose and chin in profile. His accountant is a

loose-looking youth.

The billiard-table is a favourite resort of officers' batmen. They have

nothing else to do, and they can play half a day for almost nothing

at all. I always remember an acute-looking Scotch batman in kilts

(servant to the Rents-Officer). He was proud of his calves and of his

French--and (justly) of his billiards. He could bring discomfiture

upon any Frenchman who would play with him. He is the sort of officer's

servant (and there are many of them, the voluptuous dogs!) who could

carry a commission with ease and credit. But they prefer the whole days

of idleness on which they are free to follow their own devices.

The _facteurs_ drop in for a drink on their rounds. They hobnob here

a great part of the day, seemingly. And there is poor Marcelle at the

pork-shop pining for the letter from her _garçon_ in the line which

this gossiping dog has in his _serviette_ beside the cognac. All

_facteurs_ are discharged soldiers, and should know better. There is, I

fear, but a belated delivery of letters in this easy-going old town.

On market-day the café is filled with _les paysans_, who have come in

to vend their pigs and cattle, rabbits, eggs, butter, and vegetables.

The elderly ladies from the farms, with their generous growth of

moustache, sit and drink neat cognac with a masculinity that is but

fitting. The young girls sip white wine. The old men gossip, between

draughts, with their pipes trembling in their toothless gums. There are

no young men.

CHAPTER V

L'HÔTEL DES BONS ENFANTS

It stands facing the Place de l'Église, with its back to the Route

de ----. There is something medieval in its name; so is there in its

surroundings and in its appearance. The gargoyles of the Église frown

down upon its southern door. There is an old Flemish house facing it in

the _Place_. It is Flemish and rambling in design itself. Its stables

are low and capacious, like those of a Chaucerian inn. The rooms of the

hotel are low-roofed, and each is large enough for an assembly ball.

There is an air of generosity about the place. You have the feeling, as

you enter, that these people enjoy living; they would have a love of

life which is Italian in its deliberateness. They would taste life with

a relish.

If you see madame you will be confirmed in this. She is rotund and

high-coloured. The placidity of her feature is infectious. As soon as

you see her (and it is not long before you will) you want to bask about

the place. The pleasantness of her smile will tell you that her first

concern is not lucre, but life. She must work to live. But neither work

nor the money it brings are ends in themselves for her.

In her day she must have been very well featured. She is still. But

rotundity is clouding the lines of her beauty in face and figure.

She has a daughter of eight playing in the anteroom. She will be as

handsome as her mother has been. She is pretty, with a regularity of

feature uncommon in a child so young. A placid nurse-girl has the care

of her. She is reading at one of the small round drinking-tables. In

fact, it is the domesticity of the place which charms you as much as

its quaint architecture. English officers in groups and French officers

with their lady friends are entering and taking seats. But madame talks

audibly and naturally of nursery matters with the nurse, the child

herself is engaged upon her _leçon de l'école_ beside the buffet,

and her nursemaid is at work upon a garment at the same table as two

highly-finished Subalterns are taking their aristocratic ease and their

Médoc.

But however homely the hotel may be in France, it is rarely free from

the blemish of the _upper room_. Officers may dine gaily with their

lady friends with as little obstruction from the management as is

offered to the payment of the bill.

We had our Christmas dinner at the Bons Enfants. It was not home, but

it was very jolly. Jolly is the word rather than happy. At home the

grub would not have been French. There would have been sisters (and

others) with whom to make merry afterwards. And we would (we hope) have

been served by someone less unlovely than the well-meaning middle-aged

woman whom madame detailed to wait upon our table. But we sang long and

loud in chorus; and afterwards went into the hall and took possession

of the piano and danced with each other; and those who couldn't dance

improvised some sort of rhythmic evolutions about the room. At any

rate, we were gay. We were determined that absence from home was

not going to seem to make us sad. And perhaps some of us forced the

merriment rather obviously. But madame, I believe, thought we were

completely happy. She came and shook us all by the hand at parting, and

gave us good wishes, and was happy she should have helped us so far to

Christmas jollity in "a furrin clime." Someone reproached her with the

plebeian features of our waitress when we had got out into the shelter

of the street, and someone--I forget who--kissed her (_i.e._, madame)

in the shadow of the porch; and she gave a gentle little scream of

delight, retrospective of the days of her blooming youth when she was

more prone to thoroughgoing reciprocity.

We returned some weeks later. Someone of the mess had a birthday,

and went down in the morning to madame and in the sunny courtyard

talked to her intimately of pullets, and _poisson_, and _boisson_,

and _omelettes_, and wafers, and cheeses, and fruits; returned to the

mess before lunch, furtively countermanded the standing orders amongst

the servants for the evening meal, and at lunch flung out a general

invitation to the Bons Enfants at eight. We lived again through the

Christmas festivities--with the difference that madame detailed a less

unhandsome wench to wait on table; and that we left earlier.

CHAPTER VI

PROVINCIAL SHOPS

All _magasins_ of any standing are served by pretty girls. This is a

point of policy. Proprietors of French shops in the towns of the War

area have come to know that the man to whom they sell is largely the

English officer in rest about the town or on his way through it. He

also knows enough of the psychology of the English officer to be sure

that if his shop is known to be served by pretty girls, the officer who

has been segregated from women for three months will enter, ostensibly

to purchase, actually to talk with the girls; also that every time he

wishes to see pretty girls he will make a purchase the pretext, and

will not be dismayed by the frequency of his purchases nor by their

price. To the officer from the line feminine intercourse is reckoned

cheap at the price of socks and ties.

They know the temper of the man in rest from the trenches; he will have

what he likes, and hang the price. So they ask what they like, and get

it. This is, of course, hard on the man permanently stationed in the

town; but it is not for him they cater. And even should he refuse to

buy at all, it is nothing to them. They can batten on the traveller and

the man in rest, and they do.

The best-remembered shops in D---- are the provision shop (agent for

Félix Potin), the newspaper shop opposite the Hôtel de Ville, the boot

shop in the Rue ----, the pipe shop in the Rue ----.

Félix Potin's agency is proprieted by a masterful woman, extremely

handsome and well-figured. She is consciously proud of this as she sits

at the receipt of custom and directs the policy. She is a very able

business woman. She is never baffled by the smallest detail referred

to her by an underling. She knows the price of the smallest bottle

of perfume (though there she may, of course, be improvising--and

with safety). If stock has been exhausted in any commodity she

knows when its reinforcements will arrive from Paris. She herself

does the Parisian buying. The whole town knows when she has been to

Paris, and when she will be going next. She makes a knowledge of

these buying-excursions intimate to all her considerable patrons.

Her periodical trips are parochial events. You will hear one officer

say to another in an English mess: "Oh, Madame ---- is off to Paris

on Sunday;" or, "Madame ---- will be back to-morrow." This is very

flattering, and very good for business.

But she purchases well. There is the finest array of perfumes and

soaps, champagne and liqueurs, cakes and biscuits, chocolates, Stilton

and Gruyère, eggs and butter, almonds and chestnuts. It is Félix Potin

in little, with all the richness of Félixian variety and quality. If

it's wine you are buying, she'll take you below to the cellars; that's

a rich and vivifying spectacle. The whole shop is shelved, desked, and

finished with an appearance of distinction; the windows are dressed

with a taste and an avoidance of super-crowding that would grace the

Rue de la Paix. The whole _magasin_ is in a class beyond compare with

any other shop in D----. It puts one in the dress-circle to purchase

a box of chocolates there. But in the interests of finance he had far

better make the purchase at the Expeditionary Force Canteen. At the

canteen you pay neither for the atmosphere of the place nor for the

expense of importation from Paris.

The stationer's shop opposite the Hôtel de Ville gets the English

newspaper daily. Towards evening there is an incessant stream of

privates, N.C.O's, and Staff-Officers asking for the daily sheet

from England. "_'Delly Mell,' m'sieur?--pas encore arrivée._" (The

_voyageur_ arrives late in these parts.) It's with difficulty you can

elbow your way about this shop at most hours of the afternoon. Soldiers

who call for the paper loiter, attracted by the post-cards or the range

of English novels. The post-cards are spread out in an inciting array.

They are Parisian in their frankness.

Everyone knows the boot shop. There are four boot shops in D----. But

when you speak of the boot shop there is no doubt in the mind of the

company which is the shop referred to, because the prettiest girl in

D---- is there. When an officer appears in the street with new boots

(though he guilelessly bought them at Ordnance) his friends will say:

"Ha! did she try them on for you? Was she long about it? It's a pretty

pair of shoulders, _n'est-ce pas_?" It is but fitting that the shop

with the prettiest girl in D---- should be the most expensive. So it

is. Better go bare-footed unless you have "private means" or can get

access to an Ordnance clothing store--or (better still) get an "issue."

But who can avoid the tobacconist's in the Rue ----? One must have a

well-finished pipe now and then, and the widow's daughter is handsome

and speaks a kind of English. In accordance with the French usage,

madame, as a widow, has been given this tobacco shop by the State. Had

she been daughterless, or had her daughter been unlovely, she would

have imported some _jolie demoiselle_. But she had no need. Marie

Thérèse fills the rôle. And Marie Thérèse is kept busy by a genuine

queue of purchasers. For this is the shop where small purchases are

most excusable, and in any case it is an easy matter to ask for an

impossible brand of tobacco and listen with feigned amazement to Marie

Thérèse's pretty, well-gestured regrets that she has it not. But

she has other. But you explain how you are a purist, and none other

will do. And if the shop is not busy--which is seldom indeed--such

explanations can be made elaborate and prolonged, and Marie Thérèse

can be made intelligently interested in the inscrutable whims of

thoroughgoing smokers. But the damsel is not all guileless. If it is

your ill-fortune that she has what you ask, you pay well and truly. And

Marie Thérèse knows as well as you (though neither says so) that you

have paid for the repartee.

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND