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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of General Bramble, by Andre Maurois
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: General Bramble
+
+Author: Andre Maurois
+
+Translator: Jules Castier
+            Ronald Boswell
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2009 [EBook #30596]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENERAL BRAMBLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrew Sly, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL BRAMBLE
+
+_by_
+
+ANDRE MAUROIS
+
+_translated by_
+
+JULES CASTIER and RONALD BOSWELL
+
+
+JOHN LANE
+THE BODLEY HEAD LTD
+
+
+First Published                                           1921
+
+First Published in The Week-End Library                   1931
+
+
+
+MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+
+MORRISON AND GIBB LTD, LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I.  Portraits
+     II.  Diplomacy
+    III.  The Tower of Babel
+     IV.  A Business Man in the Army
+      V.  The Story of Private Biggs
+     VI.  An Air Raid
+    VII.  Love and the Infant Dundas
+   VIII.  A Great Chef
+     IX.  Prelude a la Soiree d'un General
+      X.  Private Brommit's Conversion
+     XI.  Justice
+    XII.  Variations
+   XIII.  The Cure
+    XIV.  The Beginning of the End
+     XV.  Danse Macabre
+    XVI.  The Glory of the Garden
+   XVII.  Letter from Colonel Parker to Aurelle
+  XVIII.  General Bramble's Return
+
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL BRAMBLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PORTRAITS
+
+  "As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks
+   at it."--Whistler.
+
+
+The French Mission in its profound wisdom had sent as liaison officer
+to the Scottish Division a captain of Dragoons whose name was
+Beltara.
+
+"Are you any relation to the painter, sir?" Aurelle, the interpreter,
+asked him.
+
+"What did you say?" said the dragoon. "Say that again, will you? You
+_are_ in the army, aren't you? You are a soldier, for a little time
+at any rate? and you claim to know that such people as painters
+exist? You actually admit the existence of that God-forsaken species?"
+
+And he related how he had visited the French War Office after he had
+been wounded, and how an old colonel had made friends with him and
+had tried to find him a congenial job.
+
+"What's your profession in civilian life, _capitaine_?" the old man
+had asked as he filled in a form.
+
+"I am a painter, sir."
+
+"A painter?" the colonel exclaimed, dumbfounded. "A painter? Why,
+damn it all!"
+
+And after thinking it over for a minute he added, with the kindly
+wink of an accomplice in crime, "Well, let's put down _nil_, eh? It
+won't look quite so silly."
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Captain Beltara and Aurelle soon became inseparable companions. They
+had the same tastes and different professions, which is the
+ideal recipe for friendship. Aurelle admired the sketches in
+which the painter recorded the flexible lines of the Flemish
+landscape; Beltara was a kindly critic of the young man's rather
+feeble verses.
+
+"You would perhaps be a poet," he said to him, "if you were not
+burdened with a certain degree of culture. An artist must be an
+idiot. The only perfect ones are the sculptors; then come the
+landscape painters; then painters in general; after them the writers.
+The critics are not at all stupid; and the really intelligent men
+never do anything."
+
+"Why shouldn't intelligence have an art of its own, as sensibility
+has?"
+
+"No, my friend, no. Art is a game; intelligence is a profession. Look
+at me, for instance; now that I no longer touch my brushes, I
+sometimes actually catch myself thinking; it's quite alarming."
+
+"You ought to paint some portraits here, _mon capitaine_. Aren't
+you tempted? These sunburnt British complexions----"
+
+"Of course, my boy, it is tempting; but I haven't got my things with
+me. Besides, would they consent to sit?"
+
+"Of course they would, for as long as you like. To-morrow I'll bring
+round young Dundas, the aide-de-camp. He's got nothing to do; he'll
+be delighted."
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Next day Beltara made a three-crayon sketch of Lieutenant Dundas. The
+young aide-de-camp turned out quite a good sitter; all he asked was
+to be allowed to do something, which meant shouting his hunting
+cries, cracking his favourite whip and talking to his dog.
+
+"Ah," said Aurelle, at the end of the sitting, "I like that
+immensely--really. It's so lightly touched--it's a mere nothing, and
+yet the whole of England is there."
+
+And, waving his hands with the ritual gestures of the infatuated
+picture-lover, he praised the artlessness of the clear, wide eyes,
+the delightful freshness of the complexion, and the charming candour
+of the smile.
+
+But the Cherub planted himself in front of his portrait, struck the
+classical pose of the golfer, and, poising his arms and hitting at an
+imaginary ball, pronounced judgment on the work of art with perfect
+frankness.
+
+"My God," he said, "what an awful thing! How the deuce did you see,
+old man, that my breeches were laced at the side?"
+
+"What on earth can that matter?" asked Aurelle, annoyed.
+
+"Matter! Would _you_ like to be painted with your nose behind your
+ear? My God! It's about as much like me as it is like Lloyd George."
+
+"Likeness is quite a secondary quality," said Aurelle condescendingly.
+"The interesting thing is not the individual; it is the type,
+the synthesis of a whole race or class."
+
+"In the days when I was starving in my native South," said the
+painter, "I used to paint portraits of tradesmen's wives for a fiver.
+When I had done, the family assembled for a private view. 'Well,'
+said the husband, 'it's not so bad; but what about the likeness, eh?
+You put it in afterwards, I suppose?' 'The likeness?' I indignantly
+replied. 'The likeness? My dear sir, I am a painter of ideals; I
+don't paint your wife as she is, I paint her as she ought to be. Your
+wife? Why, you see her every day--she cannot interest you. But my
+painting--ah, you never saw anything like my painting!' And the
+tradesman was convinced, and went about repeating in every cafe on
+the Cannebiere, 'Beltara, _mon bon_, is the painter of ideals;
+he does not paint my wife as she is, he paints her as she ought
+to be.'"
+
+"Well," interrupted young Lieutenant Dundas, "if you can make my
+breeches lace in front, I should be most grateful. I look like a
+damned fool as it is now!"
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+The following week Beltara, who had managed to get hold of some
+paints, made excellent studies in oil of Colonel Parker and Major
+Knight. The major, who was stout, found his corporation somewhat
+exaggerated.
+
+"Yes," said the painter, "but with the varnish, you know----"
+
+And with an expressive movement of his hands he made as if to restore
+the figure to more normal dimensions.
+
+The colonel, who was lean, wanted to be padded out.
+
+"Yes," said Beltara, "but with the varnish, you know----"
+
+And his hands, moving back again, gave promise of astonishing
+expansions.
+
+Having regained a taste for his profession, he tried his hand at some
+of the finest types in the Division. His portraits met with various
+verdicts; each model thought his own rotten and the others excellent.
+
+The Divisional Squadron Commander found his boots badly polished. The
+C.R.E. commented severely on the important mistakes in the order of
+his ribbons; the Legion of Honour being a foreign order should not
+have preceded the Bath, and the Japanese Rising Sun ought to have
+followed the Italian Order for Valour.
+
+The only unqualified praise came from the sergeant-major who acted as
+chief clerk to General Bramble. He was a much-beribboned old warrior
+with a head like a faun and three red hairs on top of it. He had the
+respectful familiarity of the underling who knows he is indispensable,
+and he used to come in at all times of the day and criticize the
+captain's work.
+
+"That's fine, sir," he would say, "that's fine."
+
+After some time he asked Aurelle whether the captain would consent
+"to take his photo." The request was accepted, for the old N.C.O.'s
+beacon-like countenance tempted the painter, and he made a kindly
+caricature.
+
+"Well, sir," the old soldier said to him, "I've seen lots of
+photographer chaps the likes of you--I've seen lots at fairs in
+Scotland--but I've never seen one as gives you a portrait so quick."
+
+He soon told General Bramble of the painter's prowess; and as he
+exercised a respectful but all-powerful authority over the general,
+he persuaded him to come and give the French liaison officer a
+sitting.
+
+The general proved an admirable model of discipline. Beltara, who was
+very anxious to be successful in this attempt, demanded several
+sittings. The general arrived punctually, took up his pose with
+charming deliberation, and when the painter had done, said "Thank
+you," with a smile, and went away without saying another word.
+
+"Look here," Beltara said to Aurelle, "does this bore him or not? He
+hasn't come one single time to look at what I have done. I can't
+understand it."
+
+"He'll look at it when you've finished," Aurelle replied. "I'm sure
+he's delighted, and he'll let you see it when the time comes."
+
+As a matter of fact after the last sitting, when the painter had said
+"Thank you, sir, I think I could only spoil it now," the general
+slowly descended from the platform, took a few solemn steps round
+the easel, and stared at his portrait for some minutes.
+
+"Humph!" he said at length, and left the room.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Dr. O'Grady, who was a man of real artistic culture, seemed somehow
+to understand that keeping decorations in their correct order is not
+the only criterion of the beauty of a portrait. The grateful Beltara
+proposed to make a sketch of him, and during the sitting was pleased
+to find himself in agreement with the doctor upon many things.
+
+"The main point," said the painter, "is to see simply--outlines,
+general masses. The thing is not to copy nature with childish
+minuteness."
+
+"No, of course not," replied the doctor. "Besides, it can't be done."
+
+"Of course it can't, because nature is so endlessly full of details
+which can never all be considered. The thing is to suggest their
+presence."
+
+"Quite so," said the doctor.
+
+But when he came to gaze upon the face he loved so well, and saw it
+transformed into outlines and general masses, he seemed a little
+surprised.
+
+"Well, of course," he said, "it is excellent--oh, it's very, very
+good--but don't you think you have made me a little too old? I have
+no lines at the corner of my mouth, and my hair is not quite so
+thin."
+
+He appealed to the aide-de-camp who was just then passing by.
+
+"Dundas, is this like me?"
+
+"Certainly, Doc; but it's ten years younger."
+
+The doctor's smile darkened, and he began rather insistently to
+praise the Old Masters.
+
+"Modern painting," he proclaimed, "is too brutal."
+
+"Good heavens," said Aurelle, "a great artist cannot paint with a
+powder-puff; you must be able to feel that the fellow with the pencil
+was not a eunuch."
+
+"Really," he went on, when the doctor had left in rather a bad
+temper, "he's as ridiculous as the others. I think his portrait is
+very vigorous, and not in the least a skit, whatever he may say."
+
+"Just sit down there a minute, old man," said the painter. "I shall
+be jolly glad to work from an intelligent model for once. They all
+want to look like tailors' fashion-plates. Now, I can't change my
+style; I don't paint in beauty paste, I render what I see--it's like
+Diderot's old story about the amateur who asked a floral painter to
+portray a lion. 'With pleasure,' said the artist, 'but you may expect
+a lion that will be as like a rose as I can make him.'"
+
+The conversation lasted a long time; it was friendly and technical.
+Aurelle praised Beltara's painting; Beltara expressed his joy at
+having found so penetrating and artistic a critic in the midst of
+so many Philistines.
+
+"I prefer your opinion to a painter's; it's certainly sincerer. Would
+you mind turning your profile a bit more towards me? Some months
+before the war I had two friends in my studio to whom I wished to
+show a little picture I intended for the _Salon_. 'Yes,' said the
+younger of them, 'it's all right, but there ought to be a light spot
+in that corner; your lights are not well balanced.' 'Shut up, you
+fool,' the other whispered to him, 'that'll make it _really_ good!'
+Come on, old man, come and look; I think that sketch can be left as
+it is."
+
+Aurelle walked up to the painter, and, cocking his head on one side,
+looked at the drawing.
+
+"It's charming," he said at last with some reluctance. "It's charming.
+There are some delightful touches--all that still life on the table,
+it might be a Chardin--and I like the background very much indeed."
+
+"Well, old man, I'm glad you like it. Take it back with you when you
+go on leave and give it to your wife."
+
+"Er--" sighed Aurelle, "thank you, _mon capitaine_; it's really very
+kind of you. Only--you'll think me no end of a fool--you see, if it
+is to be for my wife, I'd like you to touch up the profile just a
+little. Of course you understand."
+
+And Beltara, who was a decent fellow, adorned his friend's face with
+the Grecian nose and the small mouth which the gods had denied him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DIPLOMACY
+
+  "We are not foreigners; we are English; it is _you_ that are
+   foreigners."--An English Lady Abroad.
+
+
+When Dr. O'Grady and Aurelle had succeeded, with some difficulty, in
+obtaining a room from old Madame de Vauclere, Colonel Parker went
+over to see them and was charmed with the chateau and the park.
+
+France and England, he said, were the only two countries in which
+fine gardens were to be found, and he told the story of the American
+who asked the secret of those well-mown lawns and was answered,
+"Nothing is simpler: water them for twelve hundred years."
+
+Then he inquired timidly whether he also might not be quartered at
+the chateau.
+
+"It wouldn't do very well, sir; Madame is mortally afraid of
+new-comers, and she has a right, being a widow, to refuse to billet
+you."
+
+"Aurelle, my boy, do be a good fellow, and go and arrange matters."
+
+After much complaining, Madame de Vauclere consented to put the
+colonel up: all her sons were officers, and she could not withstand
+sentimental arguments for very long.
+
+The next day Parker's orderly joined the doctor's in the chateau
+kitchen, and together they annexed the fireplace. To make room for
+their own utensils, they took down a lot of comical little French
+articles, removed what they saw no use for, put the kettle on, and
+whistled hymns as they filled the cupboards with tins of boot polish
+in scientifically graded rows.
+
+After adoring them on the first day, putting up with them on the
+second, and cursing them on the third, the old cook came up to
+Aurelle with many lamentations, and dwelt at some length on the sad
+state of her saucepans; but she found the interpreter dealing with
+far more serious problems.
+
+Colonel Parker, suddenly realizing that it was inconvenient for the
+general to be quartered away from his Staff, had decided to transfer
+the whole H.Q. to the chateau of Vauclere.
+
+"Explain to the old lady that I want a very good room for the
+general, and the billiard-room for our clerks."
+
+"Why, it's impossible, sir; she has no good room left."
+
+"What about her own?" said Colonel Parker.
+
+Madame de Vauclere, heart-broken, but vanquished by the magic word
+"General," which Aurelle kept on repeating sixty times a minute,
+tearfully abandoned her canopied bed and her red damask chairs,
+and took refuge on the second floor.
+
+Meanwhile the drawing-room with its ancient tapestries was filled
+with an army of phlegmatic clerks occupied in heaping up innumerable
+cases containing the history in triplicate of the Division, its men,
+horses, arms and achievements.
+
+"Maps" set up his drawing-board on a couple of arm-chairs;
+"Intelligence" concealed their secrets in an Aubusson boudoir; and
+the telephone men sauntered about in the dignified, slow, bantering
+fashion of the British workman. They set up their wires in the park,
+and cut branches off the oaks and lime trees; they bored holes in the
+old walls, and, as they wished to sleep near their work they put up
+tents on the lawns.
+
+The Staff asked for their horses; and the animals were picketed in
+the garden walks, as the stables were too small. In the garden
+the Engineers made a dug-out in case of a possible bombardment.
+The orderlies' football developed a distinct liking for the
+window-panes of the summer-house. The park assumed the aspect
+first of a building site and then of a training camp, and new-comers
+said, "These French gardens _are_ badly kept!"
+
+This methodical work of destruction had been going on for about a
+week when "Intelligence" got going.
+
+"Intelligence" was represented at the Division by Captain Forbes.
+
+Forbes, who had never yet arrested a real spy, saw potential spies
+everywhere, and as he was fond of the company of the great, he always
+made his suspicions a pretext for going to see General Bramble or
+Colonel Parker. One day he remained closeted for an hour with the
+colonel, who summoned Aurelle as soon as he had left.
+
+"Do you know," he said to him, "there are most dangerous things
+going on here. Two old women are constantly being seen in this
+chateau. What the deuce are they up to?"
+
+"What do you mean?" gasped Aurelle. "This is their house, sir; it's
+Madame de Vauclere and her maid."
+
+"Well, you go and tell them from me to clear out as soon as possible.
+The presence of civilians among a Staff cannot be tolerated; the
+Intelligence people have complained about it, and they are perfectly
+right."
+
+"But where are they to go to, sir?"
+
+"That's no concern of mine."
+
+Aurelle turned round furiously and left the room. Coming across Dr.
+O'Grady in the park, he asked his advice about the matter.
+
+"Why, doctor, she had a perfect right to refuse to billet us, and
+from a military point of view we should certainly be better off at
+Nieppe. She was asked to do us a favour, she grants it, and her
+kindness is taken as a reason for her expulsion! I can't 'evacuate
+her to the rear,' as Forbes would say; she'd die of it!"
+
+"I should have thought," said the doctor, "that after three years you
+knew the British temperament better than this. Just go and tell the
+colonel, politely and firmly, that you refuse to carry out his
+orders. Then depict Madame de Vauclere's situation in your grandest
+and most tragic manner. Tell him her family has been living in the
+chateau for the last two thousand years, that one of her ancestors
+came over to England with William the Conqueror, and that her
+grandfather was a friend of Queen Victoria's. Then the colonel will
+apologize and place a whole wing at the disposal of your
+_protegee_."
+
+Dr. O'Grady's prescription was carried out in detail by Aurelle with
+most satisfactory results.
+
+"You are right," said the colonel, "Forbes is a damned idiot. The old
+lady can stay on, and if anybody annoys her, let her come to me."
+
+"It's all these servants who are such a nuisance to her, sir," said
+Aurelle. "It's very painful for her to see her own house turned
+upside-down."
+
+"Upside-down?" gasped the colonel. "Why, the house is far better kept
+than it was in her time. I have had the water in the cisterns
+analysed; I have had sweet-peas planted and the tennis lawn rolled.
+What can she complain of?"
+
+In the well-appointed kitchen garden, where stout-limbed pear trees
+bordered square beds of sprouting lettuce, Aurelle joined O'Grady.
+
+"Doctor, you're a great man, and my old lady is saved. But it appears
+she ought to thank her lucky stars for having placed her under the
+British Protectorate, which, in exchange for her freedom, provides
+her with a faultless tennis lawn and microbeless water."
+
+"There is nothing," said the doctor gravely, "that the British
+Government is not ready to do for the good of the natives."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE TOWER OF BABEL
+
+  "Des barques romaines, disais-je.--Non, disais-tu,
+   portugaises."--Jean Giraudoux.
+
+
+"Wot you require, sir," interrupted Private Brommit, "is a glass o'
+boilin' 'ot milk an' whisky, with lots o' cinnamon."
+
+Aurelle, who was suffering from an attack of influenza, was at
+Estrees, under the care of Dr. O'Grady, who tirelessly prescribed
+ammoniated quinine.
+
+"I say, doctor," said the young Frenchman, "this is a drug that's
+utterly unknown in France. It seems strange that medicines should
+have a nationality."
+
+"Why shouldn't they?" said the doctor. "Many diseases are national.
+If a Frenchman has a bathe after a meal, he is stricken with
+congestion of the stomach and is drowned. An Englishman never
+has congestion of the stomach."
+
+"No," said Aurelle; "he is drowned all the same, but his friends say
+he had cramp, and the honour of Britain is saved."
+
+Private Brommit knocked at the door and showed in Colonel Parker, who
+sat down by the bed and asked Aurelle how he was getting on.
+
+"He is much better," said the doctor; "a few more doses of
+quinine----"
+
+"I am glad to hear that," replied the colonel, "because I shall want
+you, Aurelle. G.H.Q. is sending me on a mission for a fortnight to
+one of your Brittany ports; I am to organize the training of the
+Portuguese Division. I have orders to take an interpreter with me. I
+thought of you for the job."
+
+"But," Aurelle put in, "I don't know a word of Portuguese."
+
+"What does that matter?" said the colonel. "You're an interpreter,
+aren't you? Isn't that enough?"
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+The following day Aurelle told his servant to try and find a
+Portuguese in the little town of Estrees.
+
+"Brommit is an admirable fellow," said Colonel Parker, "he found
+whisky for me in the middle of the bush, and quite drinkable beer in
+France. If I say to him, 'Don't come back without a Portuguese,' he
+is sure to bring one with him, dead or alive."
+
+As a matter of fact, that very evening he brought back with him a
+nervous, talkative little man.
+
+"Ze Poortooguez in fifteen days," exclaimed the little man,
+gesticulating freely with his small plump hands "A language so rich,
+so flexible, in fifteen days! Ah, you have ze luck, young man, to
+'ave found in zis town Juan Garretos, of Portalegre, Master of Arts of
+ze University of Coimbra, and positivist philosopher. Ze Poortooguez
+in fifteen days! Do you know at least ze Low Latin? ze Greek?
+ze Hebrew? ze Arabic? ze Chinese? If not, it is useless to
+go furzer."
+
+Aurelle confessed his ignorance.
+
+"Never mind," said Juan Garretos indulgently; "ze shape of your 'ead
+inspire me wiz confidence: for ten francs ze hour I accept you. Only,
+mind, no chattering; ze Latins always talk too much. Not a single
+word of ze English between us now. _Faz favor d'fallar Portuguez_--do
+me ze favour of speaking ze Poortooguez. Know first zat, in ze
+Poortooguez, one speak in ze zird person. You must call your speaker
+Excellency.'"
+
+"What's that?" Aurelle interrupted. "I thought you had just had a
+democratic revolution."
+
+"Precisely," said the positivist philosopher, wringing his little
+hands, "precisely. In France you made ze revolucaoung in order zat
+every man should be called 'citizen.' What a waste of energy! In
+Poortugal we made ze revolucaoung in order zat every man should be
+called 'His Highness.' Instead of levelling down we levelled up. It
+is better. Under ze old order ze children of ze poor were _rapachos_,
+and zose of ze aristocracy were _meninos_: now zey are all _meninos_.
+Zat is a revolucaoung! _Faz favor d'fallar Portuguez._ Ze Latins
+always talk too much."
+
+Having thus earned his ten francs by an hour's unceasing eloquence,
+he made a fairer proposal to Aurelle next day.
+
+"I will arrange with you for a fixed sum," he said. "If I teach you
+two souzand words, you give me fifty francs."
+
+"Very well," replied Aurelle, "two thousand words will be a
+sufficient vocabulary to begin with."
+
+"All right," said Juan Garretos; "now listen to me. All ze words
+which in ze English end with 'tion' are ze same in ze Poortooguez
+wiz ze ending 'caoung.' Revolution--_revolucaoung_;
+constitution--_constitucaoung_; inquisition--_inquisicaoung_. Now
+zere are in ze English two souzand words ending in 'tion.' Your
+Excellency owes me fifty francs. _Faz favor d'fallar Portuguez._"
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+A fortnight later Colonel Parker and Aurelle stepped on to the
+platform at B----, where they were met by Major Baraquin, the officer
+commanding the garrison, and Captain Pereira, the Portuguese liaison
+officer.
+
+Major Baraquin was a very old soldier. He had seen service--in the
+1870 campaign. All strangers, Allies included, inspired him with a
+distrust which even his respect for his superiors failed to remove.
+When the French War Office ordered him to place his barracks at
+the disposal of a British colonel, discipline required him to obey,
+but hostile memories inspired him with savage resistance.
+
+"After all, sir," said Aurelle to Parker, "his grandfather was at
+Waterloo."
+
+"Are you quite sure," asked the colonel, "that he was not there
+himself?"
+
+Above all things, Major Baraquin would never admit that the armies of
+other nations might have different habits from his own. That the
+British soldier should eat jam and drink tea filled him with generous
+indignation.
+
+"The colonel," Aurelle translated, "requests me to ask you ..."
+
+"No, no, _no_," replied Major Baraquin in stentorian tones,
+without troubling to listen any further.
+
+"But it will be necessary, sir, for the Portuguese who are going to
+land...."
+
+"No, no, _no_, I tell you," Major Baraquin repeated,
+resolved upon ignoring demands which he considered subversive
+and childish. This refrain was as far as he ever got in his
+conversations with Aurelle.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Next day several large British transports arrived, and disgorged upon
+the quay thousands of small, black-haired men who gazed mournfully
+upon the alien soil. It was snowing, and most of them were seeing
+snow for the first time in their lives. They wandered about in the
+mud, shivering in their spotted blue cotton uniforms and dreaming, no
+doubt, of sunny Alemtejo.
+
+"They'll fight well," said Captain Pereira, "they'll fight well.
+Wellington called them his fighting cocks, and Napoleon said his
+Portuguese legion made the best troops in the world. But can you
+wonder they are sad?"
+
+Each of them had brought with him a pink handkerchief containing his
+collection of souvenirs--little reminders of his village, his
+people, or his best girl--and when they were told that they could
+not take their pink parcels with them to the front, there was a
+heart-breaking outcry.
+
+Major Baraquin, with unconscious and sinister humour, had quartered
+them in the shambles.
+
+"It would be better----" began Colonel Parker.
+
+"Il vaudrait peut-etre mieux----" Aurelle attempted to translate.
+
+"Vossa Excellencia----" began Captain Pereira.
+
+"No, no, _no_," said the old warrior passionately.
+
+The Portuguese went to the shambles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A BUSINESS MAN IN THE ARMY
+
+  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
+   one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
+   all progress depends on the unreasonable man."--G. B. Shaw (in
+   _A Revolutionist's Handbook_).
+
+
+Colonel Musgrave of the R.A.S.C. had been instructed to
+superintend the supply and transport arrangements of the Portuguese
+Division, and Lieutenant Barefoot, in charge of a Labour Company, had
+been detailed to assist him.
+
+"These men," he explained to Colonel Musgrave, "are all Southampton
+dockers. In peace time I am their employer, and Sergeant Scott over
+there is their foreman. They tell me your Labour Companies have often
+shown rather poor discipline. There's no fear of anything like that
+with my men; they have been chosen with care, and look up to me as if
+I were a king. Scott, my sergeant, can do anything; neither he nor my
+men ever drink a drop. As for me, I am a real business man, and I
+intend to introduce new methods into the army."
+
+Barefoot was fifty years old; he had a bald head shaped like an egg.
+He had just enlisted to serve his King and country, and was
+overflowing with goodwill.
+
+The next morning twenty of his men were dead-drunk, two were absent
+at roll-call, and Sergeant Scott had a scar on his nose which seemed
+to be the result of a somewhat sudden encounter with mother earth.
+
+"No matter," said the worthy N.C.O., "Barefoot is an ass, and never
+notices anything."
+
+Next day the first batch of Portuguese troops arrived. British tugs
+towed the huge transports round the tiny harbour with graceful ease,
+and the decks seethed with masses of troops. The harbour captain and
+the _Ponts et Chaussees_ engineer were loud in protest against these
+wonders, as being "contrary to the ideas of the Service." The wharves
+were filled with motor lorries, mountains of pressed hay, sacks of
+oats and boxes of biscuits.
+
+Colonel Musgrave, who was to take charge of this treasure-store,
+began to make his plan of campaign.
+
+"To-morrow, Friday," he said, "there will be a parade on the wharf at
+7 a.m. I shall hold an inspection myself before work is begun."
+
+On Friday morning at seven, Barefoot, his labourers and the lorries
+were all paraded on the wharf in excellent order. At eight the
+colonel got up, had his bath and shaved. Then he partook of eggs and
+bacon, bread and jam, and drank two cups of tea. Towards nine o'clock
+his car took him to the wharf. When he saw the men standing
+motionless, the officer saluting and the lorries all in a row,
+his face went as red as a brick, and he stood up in his car and
+addressed them angrily:
+
+"So you are incapable of the slightest initiative! If I am absent for
+an hour, detained by more important work, everything comes to a
+standstill! I see I cannot rely on anyone here except myself!"
+
+The same evening he called the officers together.
+
+"To-morrow, Saturday," he said, "there will be a parade at 7 a.
+m.--and this time I shall be there."
+
+The next morning Barefoot with his men and lorries paraded once more
+on the wharf, with a sea-wind sweeping an icy rain into their faces.
+At half-past seven the lieutenant took action.
+
+"We will start work," he said. "The colonel was quite right yesterday
+and spoke like a real business man. In our respect for narrow
+formalism, we stupidly wasted a whole morning's work."
+
+So his men began to pile up the cases, the lorries started to move
+the sacks of oats, and the day's work was pretty well advanced when
+Colonel Musgrave appeared. Having had his bath and shaved, and
+absorbed poached eggs on toast, bread, marmalade and three cups of
+tea, he had not been able to be ready before ten. Suddenly coming
+upon all this healthy bustle, he leaped out of his car, and angrily
+addressed the eager Barefoot, who was approaching him with a modest
+smile.
+
+"Who has had the impudence to call the men off parade before my
+arrival?" he said. "So if I happen to be detained elsewhere by more
+important work, my orders are simply disregarded! I see again that I
+cannot rely on anyone here except myself!"
+
+Meanwhile the crestfallen Barefoot was meditating upon the mysterious
+ways of the army. Musgrave inspected the work and decided that
+everything was to be done all over again. The biscuits were to be
+put in the shed where the oats had been piled, and the oats were to
+be put out in the open where the biscuits had been. The meat was to
+change places with the jam, and the mustard with the bacon. The
+lorries were to take away again everything they had just brought up.
+So that when lunch-time arrived, everything was in exactly the same
+state as it had been at dawn. The Admiralty announced the arrival of
+a transport at two o'clock; the men were supposed to find their
+rations ready for them upon landing.
+
+Musgrave very pluckily decided that the Labour Company were to have
+no rest, and were just to be content with nibbling a light lunch
+while they went on with their work.
+
+Barefoot, who had got up at six and was very hungry, approached the
+colonel in fear and trembling.
+
+"May I leave my sergeant in charge for half an hour, sir?" he asked.
+"He can do everything as well as I can. I should like just to run
+along to the nearest cafe and have something warm to eat."
+
+Musgrave gazed at him in mournful astonishment.
+
+"Really," he said, "you young fellows don't seem to realize that
+there's a war on." Whereupon he stepped into his car and drove off to
+the hotel.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Barefoot, somewhat downcast, buttonholed the interpreter, who was
+father-confessor to all Englishmen in distress. Aurelle begged him
+not to get excited.
+
+"You are always talking about introducing your business methods into
+the army. As if that were possible! Why, the objects of the two
+things are entirely different. A business man is always looking
+for work; an officer is always trying to avoid it. If you neglect
+these principles, I can foresee an ignominious end in store for you,
+Barefoot, and Colonel Musgrave will trample on your corpse."
+
+Now the thirty thousand Portuguese had been fed during their long
+voyage on tinned food; and as the transports' holds were being
+cleared, innumerable empty tins began to accumulate on the wharves.
+Barefoot and his men were ordered to gather these tins together into
+regular heaps. These grew so rapidly that the Mayor of the town was
+exceedingly concerned to see such a waste of space in a harbour
+already filled to bursting-point, and sent a pointed letter to
+Colonel Musgrave, asking him to find some other place for his empty
+tins.
+
+Colonel Musgrave ordered his interpreter to write an equally pointed
+letter, reminding the Mayor of B---- that the removal of refuse was a
+municipal concern, and that the British Army was therefore waiting
+for the Town to hand over a plot of ground for the purpose.
+
+Barefoot happened to speak of this difficulty one day to the business
+man at whose house he was billeted; and the latter told him that a
+process had recently been discovered by which old tins could be
+melted down and used again, and that a company had been floated to
+work out the scheme; they would be sure to purchase Colonel
+Musgrave's tins.
+
+The enthusiastic Barefoot began to see visions of profitable and
+glorious enterprises. Not only would he rid his chief and the Mayor
+of B---- of a lot of cumbersome salvage, but this modest contract for
+some tens of tons might well serve as a model to those responsible
+for the sale of the millions of empty tins scattered daily by the
+British Army over the plains of Flanders and Artois. And the
+Commander-in-Chief would call the attention of the War Office to the
+fact that "Lieutenant E. W. Barefoot, by his bold and intelligent
+initiative, had enabled salvage to be carried out to the extent of
+several million pounds."
+
+"Aurelle," he said to the interpreter, "let's write to this company
+immediately; we'll speak about it to the colonel when we get their
+reply."
+
+The answer came by return; they were offered twenty francs per ton,
+carriage at the company's cost.
+
+Barefoot explained his scheme to Colonel Musgrave with assumed
+modesty, adding that it would be a good thing to flatten out the tins
+before dispatching them, and that Sergeant Scott, who was a handy
+man, could easily undertake the job.
+
+"First of all," said the colonel, "why can't you mind your own
+business? Don't you know you are forbidden to correspond with
+strangers upon matters pertaining to the service without consulting
+your superior officers? And who told you _I_'ve not been thinking
+for quite a long time of selling your damned tins? Do you think
+things are as simple as all that in the army? Fetch Aurelle; I'm
+going to see the superintendent of the French Customs."
+
+Three years' experience had taught Colonel Musgrave that the French
+Customs Service were always to be relied on.
+
+"Kindly ask this gentleman whether the British Army, having imported
+tins with their contents without paying any duty, has the right to
+sell these tins empty in France?"
+
+"No," answered the official, when the colonel's question had been
+translated to him, "there is an order from our headquarters about the
+matter. The British Army must not carry on any sale of metal on
+French soil."
+
+"Thank him very much," said the colonel, satisfied.
+
+"Now just look here," he said to Barefoot on returning, "what a nice
+mess you would have made if I hadn't known my business. Let this be a
+lesson to you. In future it will be better if you look after your men
+and leave the rest to me. As for the tins, I have thought of a
+solution which will satisfy everyone concerned."
+
+Next day Barefoot received orders to have the tins packed on lorries,
+and carried in several loads to the end of the pier, whence they were
+neatly cast into the sea. In this way the Mayor was spared the
+trouble of finding a dumping-ground, the British Government paid for
+the petrol consumed by the lorries, the _Ponts et Chaussees_ bore
+the expense of the dredging, and, as Colonel Musgrave said, every one
+was satisfied.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Colonel Parker, before rejoining the Division, wrote out a report,
+as usual, about the operations at B----.
+
+"I beg to draw attention," the document ran, "to the excellent
+organization of the Supply arrangements. Thirty thousand men have
+been provided with rations in a harbour where no British base
+existed. This result is due especially to the organizing abilities
+displayed by Colonel A. C. Musgrave, C.M.G., D.S.O. (R.A.S.C.).
+Although this officer has only recently been promoted, I consider it
+my duty to recommend him ..."
+
+"What about Barefoot?" said Aurelle. "Couldn't he be made a captain?"
+
+"Barefoot? That damned shopkeeper fellow whom Musgrave told me about?
+The man who wanted to introduce his methods into the army? He's a
+public danger, my boy! But I can propose your friend Major Baraquin
+for a C.M.G., if you like."
+
+"Baraquin?" Aurelle exclaimed in turn. "Why, he always refused
+everything you asked him for."
+
+"Yes," said the colonel; "he's not very easy to get on with; he
+doesn't understand things; but he's a soldier, every inch of him! I
+like old Baraquin!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE STORY OF PRIVATE BIGGS
+
+  "La Nature fait peu de gens vaillants; c'est la bonne institution
+   et la discipline."--Charron.
+
+
+The new padre was a stout, artless man with a kind face. He was only
+just out from England, and delighted the general with his air of
+innocent surprise.
+
+"What's making all that noise?" he asked.
+
+"Our guns," said Colonel Parker.
+
+"Really?" replied the padre, in mild astonishment. As he walked into
+the camp, he was stopped by a sentry.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Friend," he answered. Then he went up to the man and added
+anxiously, "I suppose that was the right thing to answer, wasn't
+it?"
+
+The general was delighted at these stories, and asked the Rev. Mr.
+Jeffries to take his meals at his own table.
+
+"Padre," he said, "don't you think our mess is a happy family?"
+
+"Padre," chimed in the doctor approvingly, "don't you think that this
+mess has all the characteristics of a family? It is just a group of
+people thrown together by chance, who never understand each other in
+the least, who criticize one another severely, and are compelled by
+circumstances to put up with each other."
+
+"There's nothing to joke about," said Colonel Parker. "It's these
+compulsory associations that often give rise to the finest devotion."
+
+And being in a lively mood that evening, he related the story of
+Private Biggs:
+
+"You remember Biggs, who used to be my orderly? He was a shy,
+refined little fellow, who used to sell neckties in peace-time. He
+loathed war, shells, blood and danger.
+
+"Well, at the end of 1916, the powers that be sent the battalion to
+Gamaches training camp. A training camp, padre, is a plot of ground
+traversed by imitation trenches, where officers who have never been
+near the line teach war-worn veterans their business.
+
+"The officers in charge of these camps, having a _clientele_ to
+satisfy, start some new fashion every season. This spring I
+understand that 'open file' is to be the order of the day; last
+autumn 'massed formation' was the watchword of the best firms.
+There's a lot of talk been going on for some time, too, about 'firing
+from the hip'; that's one of my friend Lamb's absolutely original
+creations--a clever fellow that; he ought to do very well.
+
+"At Gamaches the officer in command was Major Macleod, a bloodthirsty
+Scot whose hobby was bayonet work. He was very successful at showing
+that, when all's said and done, it's the bayonet that wins battles.
+Others before him have sworn that it is only hand-grenades, heavy
+guns, or even cavalry that can give a decisive victory. But Macleod's
+doctrine was original in one respect: he favoured moral suggestion
+rather than actual practice for the manufacture of his soldiers. For
+the somewhat repulsive slaughter of bayonet fighting he found it
+necessary to inspire the men with a fierce hatred of the enemy.
+
+"For this purpose he had bags of straw stuffed to the shape of German
+soldiers, adorned with a sort of German helmet and painted
+field-grey, and these were given as targets to our Highlanders.
+
+"'Blood is flowing,' he used to repeat as the training proceeded,
+'blood is flowing, and you must rejoice at the sight of it. Don't
+get tender-hearted; just think only of stabbing in the right place.
+To withdraw the bayonet from the corpse, place your foot on the
+stomach.'
+
+"You can imagine how Biggs's soul revolted at these speeches. In vain
+did Sergeant-Major Fairbanks of the Guards deliver himself of his
+most bloodthirsty _repertoire_; Biggs's tender heart was
+horror-struck at the idea of bowels and brains exposed, and it was
+always owing to him that the most carefully-prepared charges were
+deprived of the warlike frenzy demanded by Major Macleod.
+
+"'_As_ you were!' Sergeant-Major Fairbanks used to yell. '_As_ you
+were! Now then, Private Biggs.' And after twenty attempts had failed,
+he would conclude sadly, 'Well, boys, mark my words, come Judgment
+Day, when we're all p'radin' for the final review an' the Lord comes
+along, no sooner will the Archangel give the order, "'Tention!" than
+'e'll 'ave to shout, "As you were! Now then, Private Biggs!"'
+
+"When the period of training was over, Macleod assembled all our men
+in a large shed and gave 'em his celebrated lecture on 'hatred of the
+enemy.'
+
+"I was really curious to hear him, because people at G.H.Q. were
+always talking about the extraordinary influence he had over the
+troops' _moral_. 'One of Macleod's speeches,' said the Chief of
+Staff, 'does the Huns as much harm as ten batteries of heavy
+howitzers.'
+
+"The lecturer began with a ghastly description of the shooting of
+prisoners, and went on to a nauseating account of the effects of gas
+and a terrible story about the crucifixion of a Canadian sergeant;
+and then, when our flesh was creeping and our throats were dry, came
+a really eloquent hymn of hate, ending with an appeal to the avenging
+bayonet.
+
+"Macleod was silent for a few minutes, enjoying the sight of our
+haggard faces; then, considering we were sufficiently worked up, he
+went on:
+
+"'Now, if there is any one of you who wants anything explained, let
+him speak up; I'm ready to answer any questions.'
+
+"Out of the silence came the still, small voice of Private Biggs.
+
+"'Please, sir?'
+
+"'Yes, my man,' said Major Macleod kindly.
+
+"'Please, sir, can you tell me how I can transfer to the Army Service
+Corps?'
+
+"That evening, in the kitchen, our orderlies discussed the incident,
+and discovered in course of conversation that Biggs had never killed
+a man. All the others were tough old warriors, and they were much
+astonished.
+
+"Kemble, the general's orderly, a giant with a dozen or so to his
+account, was full of pity for the poor little Cockney. 'Mon, mon,'
+he said, 'I can hardly believe ye. Why, never a single one? Not
+even wounded?'
+
+"'No,' said Biggs, 'honest Injun. I run so slowly, I'm always the
+last to get there--I never get a chance.'
+
+"Well, a few days later, the battalion was up in the line again, and
+was sent into a little stunt opposite Fleurbaix, to straighten out a
+salient. You remember, sir? It's one of the best things the Division
+has ever done.
+
+"Artillery preparation, low barrage, cutting
+communications--everything came off like clockwork, and we caught the
+Boches in their holes like rabbits.
+
+"While the men were busy with their rifles, grenades and bayonets,
+cleaning up the conquered trenches, suddenly a voice was heard
+shouting:
+
+"'Harry, Harry, where are you?... Just send Biggs along here, will
+you?... Pass the word along to Private Biggs.'
+
+"It was the voice of the Highlander, Kemble. Some giant grasped Biggs
+by the seat of his trousers and swung him and his rifle up to the
+parapet. Then two strong hands seized the little man, and he was
+swung in mid-air from man to man right up the file till he was
+finally handed over to Kemble, who seized him affectionately with his
+left hand, and, full of joy at the dainty treat he had in store for
+his friend, cried, 'Mon, mon, look in this wee hole: I've got twa of
+'em at the end of my rifle, but I've kept 'em for you.'
+
+"This is a true story," added Colonel Parker, "and it shows once more
+that the British soldier has a kind heart."
+
+The Rev. Mr. Jeffries had turned very pale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+AN AIR RAID
+
+  "I do not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious."--Chesterton.
+
+
+"They'll be here soon," said Dr. O'Grady. "The moon is low, and the
+shadows are long, and these oblique lights will suit them very well."
+
+The division was in rest on the hills overlooking Abbeville, and the
+doctor was walking to and fro with Colonel Parker and Aurelle along
+the lime-bordered terrace, from which they could see the town that
+was going to be attacked. From the wet grassy lawns near by groups of
+anxious women were scanning the horizon.
+
+"Yesterday evening, in a suburb," said Aurelle, "they killed a
+baker's three children."
+
+"I am sorry," put in the doctor, "they should be favoured with this
+fine weather. The law of the storm seems to be exactly the same for
+these barbarians as it is for innocent birds. It's absolutely
+contradictory to the notion of a just Divinity."
+
+"Doctor," said Aurelle, "you are an unbeliever."
+
+"No," replied the doctor, "I am an Irishman, and I respect the bitter
+wisdom of the Catholic faith. But this universe of ours, I confess,
+strikes me as completely non-moral. Shells and decorations fall
+haphazard from above on the just and the unjust alike; M. Poincare's
+carburettor gets out of order just as often as the Kaiser's. The Gods
+have thrown up their job, and handed it over to the Fates. It is true
+that Apollo, who is a well-behaved person, takes out his chariot
+every morning; that may satisfy the poets and the astronomers, but it
+distresses the moralist. How satisfactory it would be if the
+resistance of the air were relative to the virtues of the airman, and
+if Archimedes' principle did not apply to pirates!"
+
+"O'Grady," observed Colonel Parker, "you know the words of the psalm:
+'As for the ungodly, it is not so with them; but they are like the
+chaff which the wind scattereth away from the face of the earth.'"
+
+"Yes, colonel; but supposing you, a good man, and I, a sinner, were
+suddenly hit by a bomb----"
+
+"But, doctor," Aurelle interrupted, "this science of yours is after
+all only an act of faith."
+
+"How so, my boy? It is obvious that there are laws in this world. If
+I press the trigger of this revolver, the bullet will fly out, and
+if General Webb is given an Army Corps, General Bramble will have a
+bilious attack."
+
+"Quite so, doctor; you observe a few series linked together, and you
+conclude that the world is governed by laws. But the most important
+facts--life, thought, love--elude your observations. You may perhaps
+be sure that the sun is going to rise to-morrow morning, but you
+don't know what Colonel Parker is going to say next minute. Yet you
+assert that the colonel is a machine; that is because your religion
+tells you to."
+
+"So does every one else's religion," said the doctor. "Only yesterday
+I read in the Bishop of Broadfield's message: 'The prayers for rain
+cannot take place this week, as the barometer is too high.'"
+
+Far away over the plain, in the direction of Amiens, the
+star-sprinkled sky began to flicker with tiny, flashing points of
+light.
+
+"Here they come," said Aurelle.
+
+"They'll be ten minutes yet," said the doctor. They resumed their
+walk.
+
+"O'Grady," Colonel Parker put in, "you're getting more crazy every
+day. You claim, if I comprehend your foolish ideas aright, that a
+scientist can foretell rain better than an Anglican bishop. What a
+magnificent paradox! Meteorology and medicine are far less solid
+sciences than theology. _You_ say that the universe is governed by
+laws, don't you? Nothing is less certain. It is true that chance
+seems to have established a relative balance in the tiny corner of
+the universe which we inhabit, but there is nothing to show that this
+balance is going to last. If you were to press the trigger of this
+revolver to-morrow, it is just possible that it would not go off. It
+is also possible that the German aeroplanes will cease to fly, and
+that General Bramble will take a dislike to the gramophone. _I_
+should not be surprised at any of these things; I should simply
+recognize that supernatural forces had come into our lives."
+
+"Doctor," said Aurelle, "you know the clock which my orderly Brommit
+winds up every evening? Let us suppose that on one of the molecules
+that go to make up the minute-hand of that clock there live a race of
+beings who are infinitely small, and yet as intelligent as we are.
+These little creatures have measured their world, and have noticed
+that the speed of its motion is constant; they have discovered that
+their planet covers a fixed distance in a fixed period of time, which
+for us is a minute and for them a century. Amongst their people there
+are two schools of thought. The scientists claim that the laws of the
+universe are immutable, and that no supernatural power can intervene
+to change them. The believers admit the existence of these laws, but
+they also assert that there is a divine being who can interfere with
+their course; and to that being they address prayers. In that tiny
+world, which of them is right? The believers, of course; for there is
+such a being as Private Brommit, and if he forgets one evening to
+wind up the clock, the scientists and all their proud theories will
+vanish away like smoke in a cataclysm which will bring whole worlds
+to their doom."
+
+"That's so," said the doctor; "but if they had prayed----"
+
+"Listen," interrupted Aurelle.
+
+The park had become strangely silent; and though there was no wind,
+they could hear the gentle rustling of the leaves, the barking of a
+dog in the valley, the crackling of a twig under a bird's weight. Up
+above, in the clear sky, there was a feeling of some hostile
+presence, and a disagreeable little buzzing sound, as though there
+were some invisible mosquito up among the stars.
+
+"They're here now," said the doctor.
+
+The noise increased: a buzzing swarm of giant bees seemed to be
+approaching the hill.
+
+Suddenly there was a long hiss, and a ray of light leaped forth from
+the valley and began to search the sky with a sort of superhuman
+thoroughness. The women on the lawn ran away to the shelter of the
+trees. The short, sharp barking of the guns, the deeper rumble of the
+bombs that were beginning to fall on the town, and the earth-shaking
+explosions terrified them beyond endurance.
+
+"I'm going to shut my eyes," said one, "it's easier like that."
+
+"My God," exclaimed another, "I can't move my legs an inch!"
+
+"Fear," said the doctor, "shows itself in hereditary reflexes. Man,
+when in danger, seeks the pack, and fright makes his flesh creep,
+because his furred ancestors bristled all over when in combat, in
+order to appear enormous and terrible."
+
+A terrific explosion shook the hill, and flames arose over the town.
+
+"They're aiming at the station," said the colonel. "Those
+searchlights do more harm than good. They simply frame the target and
+show it up."
+
+"When I was at Havre," Aurelle remarked, "a gunner went to ask the
+Engineers for some searchlights that were rotting away in some store
+or other. 'Quite impossible,' said the engineer; 'they're the war
+reserve; we're forbidden to touch them.' He could never be brought to
+understand that the war we were carrying on over here was the one
+that was specified in his schedule."
+
+The great panting and throbbing of an aeroplane was coming nearer,
+and the whole sky was quivering with the noise of machinery like a
+huge factory.
+
+"My God," exclaimed the doctor, "we're in for it this time!"
+
+But the stars twinkled gently on, and above the din they heard the
+clear, delicate notes of a bird's song--just as though the throbbing
+motors, the whizzing shells and the frightened wailing of the women
+were nothing but the harmonies devised by the divine composer of some
+military-pastoral symphony to sustain the slender melody of a bird.
+
+"Listen," whispered Colonel Parker, "listen--a nightingale!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+LOVE AND THE INFANT DUNDAS
+
+  "... Of which, if thou be a severe sour-complexion'd man, then I
+   hereby disallow thee to be a competent judge."--_The Compleat
+   Angler._
+
+
+The Infant Dundas struck up a rag-time on the sergeant-major's
+typewriter, did a juggling turn with the army list, and let forth a
+few hunting yells; then, seeing that the interpreter had reached the
+required state of exasperation, he said:
+
+"Aurelle, why should we stay in this camp? Let's go into the town;
+I'll get hold of the Intelligence car, and we'll go and see
+Germaine."
+
+Germaine was a pretty, friendly girl who sold novels, chocolates and
+electric lamps at Abbeville. Dundas, who was not interested in
+women, pretended to have a discreet passion for her; in his mind
+France was associated with the idea of love-affairs, and he thought
+it the right thing to have a girl-friend there, just as he would have
+thought it correct to hunt in Ireland, or to ski at St. Moritz.
+
+But when Germaine, with feigned timidity, directed on him the slowly
+dwindling fire of her gaze, Dundas was afraid to put his arm round
+her waist; this rosy-cheeked giant, who was a champion boxer and had
+been wounded five times, was as bashful and shy as a child.
+
+"Good morning," he would say with a blush.
+
+"Good morning," Germaine would answer, adding in a lower voice for
+Aurelle's benefit, "Tell him to buy something."
+
+In vain did Aurelle endeavour to find books for the Infant. French
+novels bored him; only the elder Dumas and Alphonse Daudet found
+favour in his eyes. Dundas would buy his seventeenth electric lamp,
+stop a few minutes on the doorstep to play with Germaine's black dog
+Dick, and then say good-bye, giving her hand a long squeeze and going
+away perfectly happy in the thought that he had done his duty and
+gone on the spree in France in the correct manner.
+
+"A nice boy, your friend--but he is rather shy," she used to say.
+
+On Sundays she went for walks along the river with an enormous mother
+and ungainly sisters, escorted gravely by Dundas. The mess did not
+approve of these rustic idylls.
+
+"I saw him sitting beside her in a field," said Colonel Parker, "and
+his horse was tied to a tree. I think it's disgusting."
+
+"It's shameful," said the padre.
+
+"I'll speak to him about it," said the general, "it's a disgrace to
+the mess."
+
+Aurelle tried to speak up for his friend.
+
+"Maybe," said the doctor, "pleasure is a right in France, but in
+England it's a crime. With you, Aurelle, when girls see you taking a
+lady-friend out, their opinion of you goes up. In London, on the
+other hand----"
+
+"Do you mean to say, doctor, that the English never flirt?"
+
+"They flirt more than you do, my boy; that's why they say less about
+it. Austerity of doctrine bears a direct proportion to strength of
+instinct. You like to discuss these matters, because you think
+lightly of them, and in that we Irish resemble you. Our great
+writers, such as Bernard Shaw, write thousands of paradoxes about
+marriage, because their thoughts are chaste. The English are far more
+prudish because their passions are stronger."
+
+"What's all this you're saying, doctor?" interrupted the general. "I
+seem to be hearing very strange doctrines."
+
+"We're talking about French morals, sir."
+
+"Is it true, Messiou," inquired Colonel Parker, "that it is the
+custom in France for a man to take his wife and his mistress to the
+theatre together to the same box?"
+
+"You needn't try to convince Aurelle of your virtue, colonel," said
+the doctor; "he's been living with you for four years, and he knows
+you."
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Meanwhile Dundas continued to go down into Abbeville every day and
+meet his friend. The shelling had got very bad, and the inhabitants
+began to leave the town. Germaine, however, remained calm. One day a
+shell hit the shop next door to hers, and shattered the whole of
+the whitewashed front of the house, and the plaster crumbling away
+revealed a fine wooden building which for the last two centuries
+had been concealing its splendid carved beams beneath a wretched
+coat of whitewash. So also did Germaine, divested by danger of her
+superficial vulgarity, suddenly show her mettle and prove herself
+the daughter of a race of soldiers.
+
+Accordingly Dundas had conceived a warm and respectful friendship for
+her. But he went no further until one day when the alarm caught them
+together just as he was bidding her good-bye; then only did the
+darkness and the pleasant excitement of danger cause him to forget
+ceremony and convention for a few minutes.
+
+Next day Germaine presented the Infant with a fat yellow book; it was
+Madame de Staels _Corinne_. The rosy-cheeked one looked askance at
+the small closely printed pages.
+
+"Aurelle," he implored, "be a good chap and tell me what it's all
+about--I'm not going to read the damned thing!"
+
+"It's the story of a young Scotch laird," replied Aurelle, "who wants
+to marry a foreign girl against his family's wish."
+
+"My God!" exclaimed Dundas. "Do you think she expects me to marry
+her? My cousin Lord Bamford married a dancer and he's very happy;
+he's the gentleman and she has the brains. But in this case it's the
+mother--she's a terrible creature!"
+
+"The Zulus," put in the doctor, who was listening, "have a religious
+custom which forbids the bridegroom-elect to see his mother-in-law.
+Should he happen but to see her footprints in the sand, he must turn
+and flee. Nothing could be wiser; for love implies an absurd and
+boundless admiration for the loved one, and her mother, appearing to
+the lover in the very image of his beloved without the charm and
+liveliness of youth, will deter him from that brief spell of folly
+which is so necessary for the propagation of the species."
+
+"Some mothers are charming," argued Aurelle.
+
+"That's another danger," said the doctor, "for as the mother always
+tends to live her daughter's emotional life, there is a constant risk
+of her falling in love with her son-in-law."
+
+"My God!" cried Dundas, horror-struck.
+
+However, the German airmen set his fears at rest that very evening by
+destroying half the town. The statue of Admiral Courbet in the middle
+of the square near the bookseller's shop was hit by a bomb. The
+admiral continued to point an outstretched finger towards the
+station, but the bookseller cleared out. Germaine followed him
+regretfully.
+
+As she was unable to take her dog Dick--a horrid mongrel, half-poodle
+and half-spaniel--Dundas gravely consented to look after him. He
+loved dogs with a sentimental warmth which he denied to men. Their
+ideas interested him, their philosophy was the same as his, and he
+used to talk to them for hours at a time like a nurse to her
+children.
+
+The general and Colonel Parker were not a bit astonished when he
+introduced Dick into the mess. They had found fault with him for
+falling in love, but they approved of his adopting a dog.
+
+Dick, an Abbeville guttersnipe, was therefore admitted to the
+refinements of the general's table. He remained, however, a rough son
+of the people, and barked when Private Brommit appeared with the
+meat.
+
+"Behave yourself, sir," Dundas said to him, genuinely shocked,
+"behave yourself. A well-brought-up dog never, never does that. A
+good dog never barks indoors, never, never, never."
+
+Germaine's pet was offended and disappeared for three days. The
+orderlies reported he had been seen in the country in doubtful
+company. At last he returned, cheerful and unkempt, with one ear torn
+and one eye bleeding, and asked to be let in by barking merrily.
+
+"You're a very naughty dog, sir," said Dundas as he nursed him
+adroitly, "a very, very bad little dog indeed."
+
+Whereupon he turned towards the general.
+
+"I'm very much afraid, sir," he said, "that this fellow Dick is not
+quite a gentleman."
+
+"He's a French dog," replied General Bramble with sorrowful
+forbearance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A GREAT CHEF
+
+  "Le roi ordonnait le matin petit souper ou tres petit souper;
+   mais ce dernier etait abondant et de trois services sans le
+   fruit."--Saint-Simon.
+
+
+In the month of February 1918, Aurelle was ordered by the French
+mission at British G.H.Q. to report at the _sous-prefecture_ at
+Abbeville and to hold himself for one day at the disposal of M.
+Lucas, who would call for him in due course.
+
+Aurelle waited for some time for M. Lucas, who eventually appeared
+escorted by an English chauffeur. He was a rather stout, clean-shaven
+little man, and wore a well-made blue suit and a yachting cap. With
+his hands in his pockets, his curt speech and the authority of his
+demeanour, he looked every inch a man accustomed to command.
+
+"You are the interpreter from G.H.Q.?" he asked. "Have you a written
+order?"
+
+Aurelle was obliged to admit he had only received an order by
+telephone.
+
+"I can't understand it!" said M. Lucas. "The most necessary
+precautions are neglected. Have you at least been told who I am? No?
+Well, listen to me, my friend, and kindly hold your tongue for a
+minute."
+
+He went and shut the door of the _sous-prefet's_ office, and came
+back to the interpreter. "I am----" he began.
+
+He looked nervously about him, closed a window, and whispered very
+softly, "I am His Majesty the King of England's chef."
+
+"Chef?" Aurelle repeated, not grasping his meaning.
+
+"His Majesty the King of England's chef," the great man deigned to
+repeat, smiling kindly at the astonishment the young man showed at
+this revelation.
+
+"You must know, my friend, that to-morrow the President of the
+Republic is to be His Majesty's guest in this town. The activity of
+the German airmen obliges us to keep the programme secret till the
+last moment. However, I have been sent out in advance with Sir
+Charles to inspect the British Officers' Club, where the lunch is to
+take place. You are to accompany me there."
+
+So they set off for the former Chateau de Vauclere, now transformed
+by British genius for comfort into an officers' club, Aurelle
+escorting the royal cook and the equerry, who was an old English
+gentleman with a pink face, white whiskers and grey spats. Above
+their heads circled the squadron of aeroplanes which had been ordered
+to protect the favoured city.
+
+During the drive, M. Lucas condescended to say a few words of
+explanation.
+
+"Our lunch is to be quite informal; the menu very simple--ever since
+the beginning of the war His Majesty has expressed a wish to be
+rationed like his people--river trout, _tournedos aux pommes,_ some
+fruit, and cider to drink."
+
+"But, Monsieur Lucas," interrupted Sir Charles timidly, "you know Her
+Majesty prefers to drink milk."
+
+"The Queen will drink cider like every one else," replied the chef
+curtly.
+
+Sir Charles was charmed with the paved courtyard of the chateau, the
+brick and stone facade with its carved escutcheons, the simple
+curves of the dining-room panelling, and the picture over the door,
+which he attributed, not without reason, to Nattier.
+
+"It's very, very small," murmured M. Lucas pensively. "However, as
+it's war-time----"
+
+Then he inquired about the kitchen. It was a vast and well-lighted
+place; the red and white tiles on the polished floor shone brightly
+in the sunshine; magnificent but useless copper saucepans hung upon
+the walls.
+
+In front of the oven a cook in a white cap was at work with a few
+assistants. Surprised by the noise, he turned round, and, suddenly
+recognizing the man in the blue suit, went as white as his cap, and
+dropped the pan he was holding in his hand.
+
+"You?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, my friend," replied the august visitor quite simply. "What a
+surprise to find you here! What a pleasure also," he added kindly.
+"Ah, now I feel relieved! An alfresco meal, a strange kitchen like
+this, made me very anxious, I must confess. But with such a
+lieutenant as you, my dear friend, the battle is already half won."
+
+"Yes," he continued, turning towards Aurelle, who was gazing with
+emotion upon the encounter and thinking of Napoleon entrusting his
+cavalry to Ney on the eve of Waterloo, "it is a curious coincidence
+to find Jean Paillard here. At the age of fifteen we made our
+_debut_ together under the great Escoffier. When I was appointed
+chef to the Ritz, Paillard took charge of the Carlton; when I took
+Westminster, he accepted Norfolk."
+
+Having thus unconsciously delivered himself of this romantic
+couplet--which goes to prove once again that poetry is the ancient
+and natural expression of all true feeling--M. Lucas paused for a
+moment, and, lowering his gaze, added in an infinitely expressive
+undertone:
+
+"And here I am now with the King. What about you?"
+
+"I?" replied the other with a touch of shame. "It's only two months
+since I was released; till then I was in the trenches."
+
+"What!" exclaimed M. Lucas, scandalized. "In the trenches? A chef
+like you!"
+
+"Yes," answered Jean Paillard with dignity. "I was cook at G.H.Q."
+
+With a shrug of resignation the two artists deplored the waste of
+talent for which armed democracies are responsible; and M. Lucas
+began in resolute tones to announce his plan of campaign. He had the
+curt precision which all great captains possess.
+
+"Since the war broke out, His Majesty has expressed a wish to be
+rationed like his people. Therefore the menu is to be very simple:
+_truite a la Bellevue, tournedos aux pommes_, some fruit.--Of course
+there will have to be an entree and some dessert for the Staff. The
+drink will be cider."
+
+"May I remind you, Monsieur Lucas," Sir Charles put in anxiously,
+"that Her Majesty prefers to drink milk?"
+
+"I have already told you," said the chef, annoyed, "that the Queen
+will drink cider like everybody else.... Nevertheless, Paillard, you
+will kindly show me the contents of your cellar; there will, of
+course, have to be wine for the Staff. The _tournedos_, I need hardly
+say, are to be grilled over a charcoal fire, and larded, of course.
+As to salad--seasoning, tomatoes and walnuts----"
+
+As he gave his orders, he illustrated their execution with gestures
+of the utmost solemnity, and his hands moved busily amongst imaginary
+saucepans.
+
+"The menu is short," he said, "but it must be perfect. The great cook
+is better recognized by the perfection of a piece of beef--or let me
+say rather by the seasoning of a salad--than by the richness of his
+sweets. One of the finest successes in my career--the one I enjoy
+recalling above all others--is that of having initiated the English
+aristocracy into the mysteries of Camembert. The choice of fruit--now
+I come to think of it, Paillard, have you any peaches?"
+
+"I should think we had!" said the latter, breaking open the lid of a
+crate which revealed a number of delicately shaded ripe peaches
+glowing in their beds of straw and cotton-wool.
+
+The chef took one and stroked it gently.
+
+"Paillard, Paillard," he said sadly, "do you call _these_ peaches? I
+can see you have been a soldier, poor fellow. Never mind, I can send
+the car to Montreuil."
+
+He remained a few minutes longer in meditation; then, satisfied at
+last, he decided to leave the chateau. In the street, he took
+Aurelle's arm very kindly.
+
+"My friend," he said, "I think that will do, thank you. And if you
+ever have the opportunity of seeing Their Majesties, don't let it
+slip by. In France, you have very wrong ideas, I assure you; since
+the Revolution, you have a prejudice against Royal Families. It is
+childish; you can take my word for it. I have been living with this
+one for more than five years, and I assure you they are quite
+respectable people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PRELUDE A LA SOIREE D'UN GENERAL
+
+  "... of cabbages and kings."--Lewis Carroll.
+
+
+A blue forage-cap appeared under the flap of the camouflaged tent.
+
+"Messiou," cried the general, "we were beginning to despair of ever
+seeing you again."
+
+"Yo-ho! Hello--o!" shouted the Infant Dundas. "I _am_ glad! Come and
+have some lunch, old man."
+
+Aurelle, happy to find his friends again, fell to heartily on the
+mutton, boiled potatoes and mint sauce. When they reached the cheese,
+General Bramble questioned him about his journey.
+
+"Well, Messiou, what about your leave? What is Paris looking like
+nowadays, and why did your mother the French Mission tell us she was
+keeping you two days at Abbeville?"
+
+Aurelle told then the story of M. Lucas and of the King's visit.
+
+"What's that, Messiou?" said General Bramble. "You've seen our King?
+Does he look well?"
+
+"Very well indeed, sir."
+
+"Good old George!" muttered the general tenderly. "Yes, he looked
+quite well when he came here. Tell us that story of the cook over
+again, Messiou; it's a jolly good story."
+
+Aurelle complied, and when he had done, he bent over towards Colonel
+Parker and asked him why the general spoke of the King like an
+affectionate nurse.
+
+"The King," said the colonel, "is much more to us than you might
+imagine. To the general, who is an Etonian, he is a kind of
+neighbour. To Dundas, he's the colonel of his regiment. To the padre,
+he's the head of the Church. To an old Tory like me, he's the living
+embodiment of England's traditions and prejudices, and the pledge of
+her loyalty to them in the future. As for the paternal tone, that's
+because for half a century the King was a Queen. Loyalism became an
+attitude of protective chivalry; nothing could have consolidated the
+dynasty more firmly. Royalty is beloved not only by the aristocracy
+but by all classes. It's a great asset to a people without
+imagination like ours to be able to see in one man the embodiment of
+the nation."
+
+"Messiou," interposed the general, "didn't they give you an M.V.O.
+for your services?"
+
+"What is that, sir--a new ribbon?"
+
+"My God!" exclaimed Dundas, much scandalized. "You've never heard of
+the Victorian Order?"
+
+"When King Edward played bridge," said the general, "and his partner
+left it to him at the right moment, the King used to declare with
+great satisfaction, 'No trumps, and you're an M.V.O.!'"
+
+"The idea that a word from the sovereign's lips or the contact of his
+person is sufficient to cure his subjects, is a very ancient and
+beautiful one," said the colonel. "Before he started distributing
+ribbons, the King used to cure scrofula. That excellent custom,
+however, came to an end with William of Orange, who used to say to
+the patient while he was operating, 'God give you better health and
+more sense!'"
+
+"The King's taboo has also disappeared," said the doctor.
+
+"I can assure you," said Aurelle, "that his taboo is still effective.
+On the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling
+about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into
+the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the
+interpreter on duty? Well, there's a seedy-looking chap over
+there, who seems up to no good. Go and tell him from me that if he
+doesn't clear out immediately I'll have him arrested.' I did so.
+'Arrest me!' said the man. 'Why, I'm the special _commissaire de
+police_ entrusted with the King's safety.'"
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+"Well, Messiou," inquired the general, "have you brought me back any
+new records from Paris for my gramophone?"
+
+Aurelle unstrapped his kit and proceeded, not without some anxiety,
+to unpack "Le Prelude a l'Apres-midi d'un Faune."
+
+"I don't know whether you'll like it, sir; it's modern French music."
+
+"I'm sure it's very fine, Messiou," said the general confidently. And
+in the interest of international courtesy he immediately assumed
+the beatific expression he usually kept for Caruso.
+
+After the first few notes, an air of bewilderment appeared upon his
+kindly face. He looked at Aurelle, whom he was surprised to find
+quite unmoved; at Colonel Parker, who was hard at work; at the
+doctor, who was inclining his head and listening devoutly; and,
+resigning himself to his fate, he waited for the end of the
+acidulated and discordant noises.
+
+"Well, Messiou," he said when it was over, "it's very nice of you not
+to have forgotten us--but----"
+
+"Yes," put in Colonel Parker, looking up, "but I'm damned if it's
+music!"
+
+"What?" shouted the doctor, scandalized. "A masterpiece like that?
+Not music?"
+
+"Come, come," said the general soothingly, "maybe it wasn't written
+for the gramophone. But, doctor, I should like you to explain."
+
+"Have you seen the Russian Ballet, sir? The faun, lying on a rock, is
+watching for the nymphs and playing in a monotonous key on his flute.
+At last they appear, half dressed; he pursues them, but they fly
+away, and one of them drops a sash, which is all he gets."
+
+"This is very interesting," said the general, much excited. "Wind up
+the gramophone, Messiou, and give us the disc over again; I want to
+see the half-dressed nymphs. Make a sign to me at the right moment."
+
+Once again the instrument filled the rustic dug-out with the wistful
+grace of the Prelude. Aurelle murmured in a low voice:
+
+  "Ce nymphes, je les veux perpetuer, si clair
+  Leur incarnat leger qu'il voltige dans l'air
+  Assoupi de sommeils touffus...."
+
+"Bravo, Messiou!" said the general, when the last notes rang out. "I
+like it better already than I did the first time. I'm sure I'll get
+used to it in the end."
+
+"I shan't," said Colonel Parker. "I shall always prefer 'God Save the
+King.'"
+
+"Yes," replied the doctor; "but your children will hum 'Pelleas,'
+and your grandchildren will say, 'Do you know that old tune that used
+to be the rage in grandfather's time?' What you never can get used
+to, colonel, is finding yourself in the presence of a somewhat more
+complex work of art than the childish productions to which you are
+accustomed. Nature is not simple; she takes the theme of a fox-trot
+and makes a funeral march out of it; and it is just these
+incongruities that are the essence of all poetry. I appeal to you for
+an opinion, Aurelle, as a citizen of the country which has produced
+Debussy and Mallarme."
+
+"Have you ever heard the excellent saying of Renoir, the old French
+painter: 'Don't ask _me_,' he said, 'whether painting ought to be
+subjective or objective; I confess I don't care a rap.'"
+
+"Ah, Messiou," sighed the general, "the confounded fellow was quite
+right too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PRIVATE BROMMIT'S CONVERSION
+
+  "Paris vaut bien une messe."--Henri IV.
+
+
+Aurelle was wakened every morning by Colonel Parker's orderly, a
+tough, thick-set, astute old soldier, who expounded the unwritten
+laws of the army for the benefit of the young Frenchman as he
+dexterously folded his clothes.
+
+"You know, sir," he said, "'as 'ow the British Tommy 'as to go to
+church in peace-time every blessed Sunday. When the time for p'rade
+comes along, the orficer on dooty gives the order to fall in
+accordin' to religions, an' the Church of England men, an' the
+Presbyterians an' the Cath'lics is marched up to their services,
+rifles an' all.
+
+"The orficer takes charge of one of the detachments, an' in the
+others the senior N.C.O. for each religion marches at the head.
+Wotever dodge you try on, there's no gettin' out of it.
+
+"When once you've gone an' accepted the King's shillin', it stands to
+reason you've got to put up with lots o' things, but Church P'rade's
+_the_ very limit. Don't you take me for a 'eathen, sir; I'm much more
+of a believer than 'eaps of others. I don't mind singin' 'ymns, an'
+when the preacher can talk a bit, I don't objeck to sermons. But what
+used to get on my nerves was the cleanin' up Sunday mornin's. You've
+only seen us in khaki; you don't know our peace-time church togs.
+Some blasted togs they were too, an' no mistake--all glitterin' with
+blinkin' red an' gold, an' covered with white beltin'. An' the
+inspection before you start wasn't no joke, I can tell you. Many's
+the weeks' pay I've 'ad stopped, all on account of Sunday mornin's.
+I'm a pretty good soldier on active service, sir--why, you seen me at
+Loos, didn't you?--but what I can't stick is all them barricks an'
+fatigues an' cleanin' ups.
+
+"F'r a long time I used to say to myself, 'Brommit, my boy, you're a
+blasted idiot--I can understand a young rookie with only two or three
+years' service not managin' to get out of Church P'rade, but a
+soldier of fifteen years' standin' ought to know the tricks of the
+trade by this time. If _you_ can't manage to stop quietly in bed on
+Sunday mornin's, you ain't worth yer service stripes,' I says.
+
+"But the more I thought about it the more 'opeless it seemed. Our
+colonel was old W. J. Reid--Slippery Bill we used to call 'im, 'cos
+'e was as slippery as a soapy plank! 'E _was_ an old monkey-face,
+an' no mistake.
+
+"One day I was called up to the orderly-room to sign somethin' or
+other, an' I sees a poster on the wall: 'Classification according to
+religions'--neat little chart it was: 'Church of England, so
+many--Presbyterians, so many--Catholics, so many.' You bet I didn't
+pay much attention to the numbers. Wot caught my eye was a column
+sayin', 'Wesleyans, None.' An' all of a sudden I saw my game.
+
+"'Wesleyans, None.' So there wasn't even a bloomin' Wesleyan N.C.O.
+to take what Wesleyans there might be to chapel! Probably there
+wasn't even one bloomin' Wesleyan minister in the little Irish town
+where we was billeted. I saw myself at last stayin' in bed every
+blessed Sunday mornin'. At the very worst, if that there little
+religion 'ad a chapel, I'd be sent there on my own, and a detachment
+of one can always be trusted to find its way about. Wesleyan--that
+was the winner.
+
+"Still, I 'ad one anxiety to 'old me back: I didn't for the life of
+me know what that there fancy religion might be. I'm not exackly a
+pious bloke, but I'm a good Christian, an' I didn't want to make a
+damned idiot o' myself. Besides, it would probably be a serious
+matter, I thought, to change your religion in the army. P'r'aps I'd
+'ave to see old Bill 'imself about it, an' Bill wasn't exactly one of
+them fellers you can take in with some 'arf-baked tale.
+
+"It was no good trying to get to know anythink in barricks. I'd only
+'ave attracted notice at an awkward moment. But I knew a girl in the
+town as knew people 'oo knowed, so I asked 'er to make inquiries.
+
+"She gave me an A1 character. An' blowed if I 'adn't been an' found
+quite a decent religion; it suited me down to the ground. O' course
+you know 'oo Wesley was, sir? 'E was a feller as thought that bishops
+an' chaplains in 'is time didn't act accordin' to Scripture. 'E
+preached the return to poverty an' 'umbleness an' love of one's
+neighbour. You bet the Church of England couldn't swallow that! On
+the 'ole it was an 'onest kind of religion, an' a decent chap like me
+might very well 'ave gone in for it without its appearin' too out o'
+the way.
+
+"Well, when I'd got myself well primed up about old Wesley, I felt as
+'ow a little interview with Bill wasn't such a terrible thing after
+all. So I goes to see the sergeant-major, and tells 'im I wants to
+speak to the colonel.
+
+"'Wot about?' 'e asks.
+
+"'Strickly privit,' I says.
+
+"'E'd 'ave liked to 'ave got my story out o' me then an' there, 'e
+would, but I knew my only chance was to take Bill off 'is guard, so
+I kep' the secret of my plan of attack.
+
+"'Well, Brommit,' says the old man quite pleasant like, 'have you got
+any complaint to make?'
+
+"'No complaints, sir,' says I; 'everything's O.K. But I've asked
+leave to speak to you, 'cos I wanted to tell you, sir, as 'ow I
+intend to change my religion.'
+
+"I saw I'd got old Bill set for once, an' no mistake.
+
+"'Change your religion?' 'e says. 'Stuff and nonsense! Have you ever
+heard of such a thing, sergeant-major? What's your religion at
+present?'
+
+"'Church of England, sir; but I wish to be put down in future as
+Wesleyan.'
+
+"'Well, I'm----! Who on earth put that notion into your head, my man?
+Has the padre offended you, or what?'
+
+"'Oh no, sir, not at all; on the contrary, Mr. Morrison's always
+been very kind to me. No, it ain't that at all, sir; but I don't
+believe in the Church of England no more, that's all.'
+
+"'You don't believe any more...? What don't you believe? What do
+_you_ know about beliefs and dogmas?'
+
+"'Why, sir, lots o' things,' I says. 'F'r instance, there's the
+bishops; I don't 'old with their way of livin', sir.'
+
+"'By Jove, sergeant-major, do you hear this damned idiot? He doesn't
+hold with the bishops' way of living! May I ask, Brommit, where you
+have had occasion to observe the ways of bishops?'
+
+"'Well, sir, Wesley was a splendid fellow ...' An' off I starts to
+spit out everythink my girl 'ad managed to get 'old of, without
+lettin' 'im put in a word. You bet 'e'd 'ad enough of it after five
+minutes. 'E'd 'ave liked to shut me up, but 'e couldn't do that
+without grantin' me wot I was askin' for. There was no flies on
+_my_ conversion, I can tell you; I 'ad real live scruples; I'd
+been thinkin' too much. You can't punish a chap becos 'e thinks
+too much.
+
+"The old man knew 'is job as well as I knew mine. 'E saw at once 'e
+only 'ad one thing to do.
+
+"'All right,' 'e said. 'After all, it's your own affair, my man.
+Sergeant-major, put him down as a Wesleyan. Brommit, you will come
+back to my room on Friday evening, and meanwhile I will arrange
+matters with the Wesleyan minister so that you can attend the
+services. You know where he lives, of course?'
+
+"'No, sir, I don't know 'im.'
+
+"'That's rather strange. Well, never mind, I'll find him. Come back
+on Friday, Brommit.'
+
+"Slippery old Bill! 'E knew a thing or two, 'e did! Next Friday
+evenin', when I went up to 'im, 'e says:
+
+"'Ah! I've settled everything,' says 'e. 'I've seen the Wesleyan
+minister, the Rev. Mr. Short. A charming man, Mr. Short. It's settled
+with him that you're to go to chapel on Sunday mornings at nine and
+on Sunday evenings at six. Yes, there are two services; Wesleyans are
+very strict. Of course if by any chance you miss a service, Mr. Short
+is sure to let me know, and I would take the necessary steps. But
+there's no need to think of that, is there? A man who takes the
+trouble to change his religion at the age of thirty is hardly likely
+to miss a service. So that's all right, Brommit.'
+
+"Oh, damn cute 'e was, was Slippery Bill! Next Sunday off I goes to
+the Reverend Short's chapel. Tall, lean chap 'e was, with a real
+wicked face. 'E gave us an awful sermon all about 'ow we were to
+reform our lives, an' about all the things we was to renounce in this
+world, an' about the 'orrible fire as was awaitin' us in the next if
+we didn't follow 'is advice. After the service Mr. Short comes up to
+me an' asks me to stay on after the others. Blowed if 'e didn't keep
+me till twelve o'clock jawin' me about the dooties my noo faith
+brought me an' about wot I read an' 'oo I talked to. By the time I
+got away from 'im I was 'arf stunned; an' I 'ad to go again in the
+evenin'!
+
+"Every blinkin' Sunday the same thing 'appened. I used to spend the
+'ole week swearin' and sendin' Short an' Wesley to the 'ottest place
+in the world. Once I tried on not goin' to chapel; but the miserable
+old 'ound split on me to the colonel, an' I 'ad a week's pay stopped.
+Then that there blessed Congregation invented Friday evenin'
+lectures; and the converted soldier, sent by kind permission of the
+colonel, was the finest ornament they 'ad.
+
+"Well, wot put an end to my patience was a month later, when Short
+'ad the cheek to jaw me personally about the girl I was walkin' out
+with. I went clean mad then, an' was ready for anythink, even for
+'avin' it out again with Bill, rather than put up with that maniac's
+talk.
+
+"'Please, sir,' I tells the colonel, 'I'm sorry to trouble you again
+with my religion, but this 'ere Wesleyanism don't satisfy me at all.
+It ain't a bit wot I'd 'oped for.'
+
+"I expected to get jolly well strafed, but I didn't. Bill just looked
+at me with a smile.
+
+"'That's all right, Brommit,' 'e said; 'the Government pays me for
+looking after the moral health of my men. And may I inquire what
+religion is at present enjoying the favour of your approval?'
+
+"'Well, sir, I don't see none at all. I've made myself a sort o'
+religion o' my own--if you'll allow it, of course.'
+
+"'I? Why, it's none of _my_ business, Brommit. On the contrary, I
+admire the vitality of your mind. You've evidently got beliefs of
+your own; that's a very good sign indeed. It's just that they will
+not admit the obligation of going to a place of public worship on a
+Sunday, that's all. I presume I am taking you correctly?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, quite correctly.'
+
+"'What an admirable coincidence, Brommit! For a long time I've been
+looking for somebody to scrub the stairs thoroughly on Sundays, while
+the men are at church. Sergeant-major, put Brommit down as an
+Agnostic--on permanent fatigue for scrubbing the stairs on Sunday
+mornings.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+JUSTICE
+
+
+The D.M.S. had sent round a note to all A.D.M.S.'s reminding them
+that all officers and men were to be inoculated against typhoid
+fever. So the A.D.M.S. of the Scottish Division ordered the different
+units to send in a nominal roll of all those who had not been
+inoculated. Most of the negligent confessed their sin; many of them
+were believers, and those who were not, respected the customs of
+their times and piously submitted to the ceremony.
+
+Only the 113th Battery, R.F.A., sent in the following roll:
+
+  |     Names.       |    Condition.        |  Reason given for   |
+  |                  |                      |     exemption.      |
+  |                  |                      |                     |
+  | Capt. Cockell    |                      |  Do not believe in  |
+  | Lieut. Little    |  Not yet inoculated. |    the efficacy of  |
+  | Lieut. M'Cracken |  Refuse inoculation. |    the operation.   |
+  |                  |                      |                     |
+
+The A.D.M.S. in high dudgeon complained to the Staff and requested
+the temporal powers to deliver the heretics over to the lancet. The
+temporal powers, while paying due reverence to medical infallibility,
+requested the A.D.M.S. to attempt a conversion.
+
+The 113th Battery was famous for its courage and its daring deeds.
+Dr. O'Grady was entrusted with the mission of visiting Captain
+Cockell and bringing that erring soul back to the fold.
+
+The gunners gave the doctor a warm welcome. Their dug-out was
+comfortable, their arm-chairs, made by the men out of the branches of
+fir-trees, were luxuriously low and deep. O'Grady dropped into one,
+and looked about him anxiously.
+
+"It is a remarkable fact," he said, "that thirst and hunger should
+make themselves felt by sensations in the mouth and stomach only,
+and not in the rest of the body. At this very moment, when all my
+organs are quite dry for lack of decent whisky, I am only warned
+by the mucous membrane in my mouth----"
+
+"Orderly! The whisky! Quick!" shouted Captain Cockell.
+
+Whereupon the doctor, his mind set at rest, was able to explain the
+object of his mission.
+
+"Doctor," answered Captain Cockell, "there is nothing I would not do
+for you. But I consider anti-typhoid inoculation, next to poison-gas,
+to be the most dangerous practice in this war."
+
+The doctor, who was a skilful reader of character, saw at once that
+only liberal doctrines would help him to success.
+
+"Oh," he exclaimed genially, "you needn't think I share the usual
+medical superstitions. But I do believe that inoculation has
+practically done away with deaths caused by typhoid. Statistics
+show----"
+
+"Doctor, you know as well as I do that statistics may be made to say
+anything one likes. There are fewer cases of typhoid in this war than
+in former wars simply because the general sanitary conditions are
+much better. Besides, when a fellow who has been inoculated is silly
+enough to be ill--and that _has_ been known to occur--you simply say,
+'It isn't typhoid--it's para-typhoid.'"
+
+"Which is perfectly true," said the doctor; "the pseudo-bacillus----"
+
+"Oh, that stunt about the pseudo-bacillus! Next time you're wounded,
+doctor, I'll say it was by a pseudo-shell!"
+
+"Very well, very well," said the doctor, somewhat nettled. "I'll just
+wait till next time you're ill. Then we'll see whether you despise
+doctors or not."
+
+"That's a poor argument, doctor, very poor indeed. I'm quite ready to
+acknowledge that a sick man is in need of moral support and requires
+the illusion of a remedy, just like a woman in love. Therefore
+doctors are necessary, just like thought-readers. I simply submit it
+should be recognized that both professions are of a similar order."
+
+The energetic Cockell had inspired his two young lieutenants with
+respectful admiration. They remained as firm as he in their refusal;
+and after an excellent lunch Dr. O'Grady returned to H.Q. and
+informed his chief of the cynicism of the 113th Battery and the
+obstinacy of the heretical sect in those parts.
+
+The A.D.M.S. sent the names of the three officers up to H.Q., and
+demanded the general's authority to put a stop to this scandal; and
+Colonel Parker promised to let the Corps know of the matter.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+Some time before this, the French Government had placed at
+the disposal of the British authorities a certain number of
+"Legion of Honour" decorations--to wit, two Grand Officer's
+badges, twelve Commander's cravats, twenty-four Officer's
+rosettes, and a considerable number of Knight's crosses.
+
+The two Governments were in the habit of exchanging armfuls of
+ribbons at regular intervals in this way, and the apportioning of
+these trifles created a useful occupation for the numerous members of
+all staffs and their still more numerous clerks.
+
+The distribution was performed according to wisely appointed rules.
+Of each batch of decorations G.H.Q. took one half for its own
+members, and passed on the other half to the Army Staffs. The Army
+Staffs kept half of what they received, and passed on the remainder
+to the Corps Staffs. The same method was applied right down to the
+Battalion Staffs, and it will readily be observed (with the help of
+an elementary arithmetical calculation) that the likelihood of the
+men in the line ever receiving a foreign decoration was practically
+nonexistent.
+
+The Scottish Division received as its share on this occasion three
+crosses. Colonel Parker and the other demi-gods of the divisional
+Olympus being already provided for, these were allotted to
+dignitaries of minor importance. It was decided that one should be
+given to Dr. O'Grady, who had done great service to the French
+population (he had assisted a Belgian refugee in childbirth and she
+had survived his ministrations). The second was marked down for the
+D.A.D.O.S., and the third for the A.D.V.S., a genial fellow
+who was very popular in the mess.
+
+The names of the three lucky men were handed by a Staff officer to an
+intelligent clerk with orders to draw up immediately a set of nominal
+rolls for the Corps.
+
+Unfortunately the clerk happened to be the very same man to whom
+Colonel Parker had given the list of the three heretics of the 113th
+Battery the day before. But who can blame him for having confused two
+groups of three names? And who can blame the officer on duty for
+having signed two nominal rolls without reading them?
+
+A month later, the Division was surprised to hear that Captain
+Cockell and Lieutenants Little and M'Cracken had been made Knights of
+the Legion of Honour. As they really deserved it, the choice caused
+considerable astonishment and general rejoicing; and the three
+warriors, happy to see three decorations reach them intact after
+having passed through so many covetous hands, were loud in praise of
+their superior officers' discrimination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+VARIATIONS
+
+  "I have no illusions left but the Archbishop of
+   Canterbury."--Sydney Smith.
+
+
+"When I was attached to a field ambulance," said the doctor, "we had
+three padres with us in the mess."
+
+"That was rather a large order," said the Rev. Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"It _was_ a large order," agreed the doctor, "but one of them anyway
+was quite harmless. The R.C. padre spoke very little, ate an
+enormous amount, and listened with infinite contempt to the
+discussions of his colleagues.
+
+"I don't want to hurt your feelings, padre, but Catholicism is _the_
+only religion. A faith is only justified if it carries conviction.
+What's the use of a creed or a dogma which is as transient as a
+philosophy? Being condemned by my profession to study beings whose
+moral balance is unstable, I am in a position to assert that the
+Roman Church has a complete understanding of human nature. As a
+psychologist and a doctor, I admire the uncompromising attitude of
+the Councils. So much weakness and stupidity requires the firm
+support of an authority without the slightest tolerance. The curative
+value of a doctrine lies not in its logical truth, but in its
+permanency."
+
+"It is quite true," said Colonel Parker, "that nothing short of the
+rigid dictates of Catholicism could have prevented the Irish from
+going completely mad. But don't judge every one from your own case,
+O'Grady; the Saxons possess a solid, Protestant intelligence."
+
+"Well," the doctor continued, "our other two padres spent their
+evenings trying to swallow each other up. One of them was Church of
+England and the other Presbyterian; and they employed the most modern
+commercial methods in their competition. Church of England found an
+old gipsy cart which he set up at Dickebusch and from which he sold
+chocolate to the Jocks; whereupon Church of Scotland installed a
+telescope at Kruystraete to show them the stars. If the one formed a
+cigar-trust, the other made a corner in cigarettes. If one of them
+introduced a magic lantern, the other chartered a cinema. But the
+permanent threat to the peace of the mess was undoubtedly the Baptist
+question.
+
+"As we had no Baptist padre, the unfortunate soldiers of that
+persuasion (of whom there were seven in the Division) could attend no
+service. The astonishing thing was that they never seemed to realize
+the extent of their misfortune.
+
+"On one point at any rate our two padres agreed: men could not be
+left, in the dangerous zone in which we were then living, without the
+consolations of religion. But both Church of England and Church of
+Scotland each claimed the right to annex this tiny neutral
+congregation.
+
+"'Excuse me,' said Church of Scotland; 'the Baptist, it is true, only
+performs the immersion ceremony when the adult's faith is confirmed,
+but on all other points he resembles the Presbyterian. His Church is
+a democratic one and is opposed to episcopacy, like ours.'
+
+"'Pardon me,' said Church of England; 'the Baptist, in demanding a
+return to the primitive form of the Sacrament, proves himself to be
+the most conservative of all British Christians. Now every
+one--including yourself--admits that the Church of England is the
+most conservative of all the Reformed Churches. Besides----'
+
+"For hours at a time they used to go on like this, and the futile
+discussion became even more annoying as I got to know the different
+arguments as well as either of them.
+
+"One day I was sent up to the ambulance's advance post at Maple
+Copse--you know, that little wood in front of Ypres."
+
+"Unhealthy spot that," said the general.
+
+"So unhealthy, sir, that while I was there a whizz-bang hit my
+dug-out and blew my sergeant into small pieces, which remained
+hanging on the branches of the trees. It was a pity, for he was the
+best forward in the brigade football team. I put all I could find of
+him into a cloth, announced the burial for the next day, and then, as
+it was my turn to be relieved, I went back to the ambulance
+headquarters.
+
+"My return was distinctly lively. On leaving the splendid trench
+which is called Zillebeke Road, I was silly enough to cross the
+exposed ground near the railway embankment. A machine gun thought it
+rather amusing to have a pot at me from Hill 60----"
+
+"All right, doctor," said General Bramble, "spare us the details."
+
+"Well, just as I left Ypres, I came across a Ford car which took me
+back to camp. In the mess I found Church of England and Church of
+Scotland arguing away as usual, while Roman Church was reading his
+breviary in a corner.
+
+"'Satan, whence comest thou?' one of them asked me.
+
+"'Well, gentlemen,' I replied, 'you ought to be glad to see me,
+because I really am back from hell this time.'
+
+"And I told them my adventures, putting in a lot of local colour
+about cannonades, explosions, whistling bullets and hailstorm
+barrages, in a style worthy of our best war correspondents."
+
+"You old humbug!" grunted the colonel.
+
+"'By the way,' I concluded, 'I've got a job for one of you!
+Freshwater, my sergeant, has been blown to bits, and what I could
+collect of him is to be buried to-morrow morning. I'll give you the
+route--Messines gate, Zillebeke----'
+
+"I saw the two padres' faces fall swiftly.
+
+"'What religion?' they both asked simultaneously.
+
+"'Baptist,' I replied carelessly. 'Have a cigarette, padre?'
+
+"The two enemies gazed attentively at the ceiling; Roman Church kept
+his nose in his breviary and his ears well pricked up.
+
+"'Well,' said Church of England at length, 'I wouldn't mind going up
+to Zillebeke. I've been in worse places to bury a man of my own
+Church. But for a Baptist it strikes me, O'Grady----'
+
+"'Excuse me,' interrupted Church of Scotland. 'Baptism is the most
+conservative form of British Christianity, and the Anglican Church
+itself boasts----'
+
+"'I dare say, I dare say,' said the other, 'but is not the Baptist
+Church a democratic one, like the Presbyterian?'
+
+"They might have gone on in this strain till the poor beggar was in
+his grave, had not Roman Church suddenly interrupted in a mild voice,
+without taking his nose out of his little book:
+
+"'I'll go, if you like.'
+
+"Hatred of Popery is the beginning of union, and they both went up
+the line together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE CURE
+
+  "Le _Schein_ et le _Wesen_ sont, pour l'esprit allemand, une seule
+   et meme chose."--Jacques Riviere.
+
+
+"The only decent whisky," said the doctor, "is Irish whisky."
+Whereupon he helped himself to a generous allowance of Scotch
+whisky, and as they had just been talking about Ludendorff's coming
+offensive, he began to discourse upon the Germans.
+
+"One of the most astounding things about German psychology," he said,
+"is their passion for suggesting the appearance of results which they
+know they are powerless to attain. A German general who is not in a
+position to undertake a real offensive deludes himself into believing
+that he will strike terror into his opponent by describing an absurd
+and appalling attack in his reports; and a Solingen cutler, if he
+cannot manufacture really sharp blades at the required price, will
+endeavour to invoke a sort of metaphysical blade which can give its
+owner the illusion of a useful instrument.
+
+"When once this trait of the national character is properly
+understood, all the German shoddy which is so much talked about seems
+no longer the swindling practice of dishonest tradesmen, but is
+simply the material expression of their ingrained Kantianism, and
+their congenital inability to distinguish Appearance from Reality.
+
+"At the sanatorium at Wiesdorf, where I was working when the war
+broke out, this method was practised with quite unusual rigour.
+
+"Doctor Professor Baron von Goeteburg was a second-rate scientist,
+and he knew it. He had made a lifelong study of the expression,
+clothes and manners which would most successfully impress his clients
+with the idea that he was the great physician he knew he could never
+be.
+
+"After innumerable careful experiments, which do him the greatest
+credit, he had decided on a pointed beard, a military expression, a
+frock coat and a baron's title.
+
+"Everything in his admirable establishment bore the impress of the
+kind of scientific precision which is the most striking hall-mark of
+ignorance. The Wiesdorf sanatorium extracted from the human carcase
+the maximum amount of formulae, scientific jargon and professional
+fees which it could possibly yield. The patients felt themselves
+surrounded by a pleasant and luxurious apparatus of diagnoses,
+figures and diagrams.
+
+"Each patient had a suite of rooms furnished, in spite of a rather
+obvious Munich atmosphere, with a sense of real comfort and order.
+Each floor was under the supervision of a doctor, a lean, athletic
+Swedish _masseur_ and a qualified nurse in a white apron. The nurses
+were nearly all daughters of the nobility, whose happiness had been
+sacrificed to the extravagance of their brothers, who were generally
+captains in the Guards. The one attached to the floor I was in charge
+of was a French Alsatian with an innocent, obstinate face, whom the
+Germans called 'Schwester Therese,' and who asked me to call her
+'Soeur Therese.'
+
+"The place was only opened in the spring of 1914, and from the very
+first season its success had testified to the excellence of the
+system. Photographs were published in all the fashionable papers, and
+wealthy clients rushed in with alarming and automatic rapidity.
+
+"On my floor I had an old American, one James P. Griffith, an English
+lady, the Duchess of Broadfield, and a Russian, Princess Uriassof.
+None of these three patients displayed symptoms of any illness
+whatsoever; they just complained of depression--nothing could amuse
+them--and of an appetite which no dish could tempt. When the American
+arrived, I considered it my duty to inform the professor of the
+excellent health in which I found him.
+
+"'O'Grady,' he said, staring hard at me with his brilliant,
+commanding eyes, 'kindly give yourself less trouble. Your patient is
+suffering from congestion of the purse, and I think we shall be able
+to give him some relief.'
+
+"The Duchess of Broadfield longed to put on flesh, and wept all day
+long. 'Madam,' Sister Therese said to her, 'if you want to get
+stouter, you ought to try and enjoy yourself.' That caused a nice
+scene! I was obliged to explain to the nurse that the Duchess was on
+no account to be spoken to before eleven in the morning, and that it
+was improper to address her without calling her 'Your Grace!'
+
+"As to Princess Uriassof, she had been preceded by a courier, who had
+burst into indignant exclamations at the sight of the Munich
+furniture and had demanded genuine antiques. The professor smiled,
+and summoned a furniture dealer and his cashier. Followed the
+princess with twenty-three boxes and six servants. She was enormously
+stout, cried the whole day long, and yearned to reduce her figure.
+
+"When the lift that was to take her down to the bathroom was not in
+front of her door at the very second when she left her room, she used
+to stamp her foot in anger, pull her maid's hair and shout:
+
+"'What? _I_ have to wait; _I_, Princess Uriassof?'
+
+"That was the kind of patient we had. Only once there came to my
+floor a young fellow from the Argentine who really had something
+wrong with his liver. I said to him, 'You are not well; you would do
+better to go and see a doctor.'
+
+"Towards the 24th of July the newspapers seemed to cause the noble
+clients of Wiesdorf sanatorium considerable anxiety. The note to
+Servia, the letters they received from their homes, the clatter of
+arms which was beginning to be heard throughout Europe, all began to
+point to a vague danger which could not, of course, affect their
+sacred persons, but might possibly hinder them from peacefully
+cultivating the sufferings which were so dear to them.
+
+"The Duchess of Broadfield telegraphed to her nephew at the Foreign
+Office and got no answer. Princess Uriassof began to hold mysterious
+confabulations with her courier.
+
+"The German doctors soon restored every one's confidence; '_Unser
+Friedens-Kaiser_ ... our peace-loving Emperor ... he is cruising on
+his yacht ... he has not the slightest thought of war.'
+
+"The barometers of refreshment vendors are always at 'set-fair,' and
+Professor von Goeteburg temporized with such authority and diplomacy
+that he managed to keep his international _clientele_ for another
+six days.
+
+"However, the peace-loving Emperor returned only to send threatening
+telegrams, and on the 27th the danger became evident even to our
+guests' bird-like intellects.
+
+"Princess Uriassof announced her departure, and sent her courier to
+the bank to cash an enormous cheque. He came back with the message
+that the bank no longer cashed foreign cheques; whereupon he
+disappeared, and was never heard of again. The Princess was beside
+herself with rage, and cried that she would have him knouted. She
+summoned her German valet, but he was busy buckling on his
+_Feldwebel_ uniform. She ordered her French chauffeur to be ready to
+start instantly; I went down to the garage with the message myself so
+as to get away from her, and discovered that the fellow was a
+reservist from Saint-Mihiel, and had left with Her Highness' car to
+join his regiment.
+
+"That morning for the first time, the Duchess and the Princess
+condescended to notice the presence of James P. He had a magnificent
+100 H.P. American car, and represented their only hope of getting
+across the frontier. But James P. had no more petrol, and the Germans
+refused to supply him with any, because his car had already been
+earmarked for General von Schmack's Staff.
+
+"The same evening these first three victims of the war sat and
+childishly discussed the situation in an untidy room on a bed which
+nobody came to make. Their telegrams were no longer forwarded, their
+money was worthless, and the German servants in the sanatorium
+treated them more as prisoners than as patients. It seemed as though
+their fortune and their greatness had suddenly abandoned them at the
+first breath of war, like a slender veil torn by the wind from a
+woman's shoulders.
+
+"James P. went to interview Dr. von Goeteburg, who answered him with
+ironical politeness, and depicted the pitiable plight of a Germany
+surrounded and attacked by a world of enemies. If, however, they were
+willing to leave him the princess's pearl necklace as security, he
+would consent to lend them the few marks they needed to cross the
+frontier.
+
+"Towards midnight I entered the room where this Twilight of the Gods
+was drawing to an end, and saw an astounding spectacle. The Duchess
+of Broadfield and Princess Uriassof were attempting to pack their own
+trunks. Their lack of experience was only too conspicuous. In every
+corner there lay hats which had been crushed by their clumsy
+attempts; the badly folded dresses swelled awkwardly and refused with
+disgraceful obstinacy to allow the Princess to lock her trunks.
+Vanquished at last by the stress of events against which she was
+contending for the first time in her life, she sat down on a
+portmanteau and burst into tears. The Duchess, who came of a less
+fatalistic race, was still struggling, aided by James P., with two
+rebellious valises.
+
+"I went and called Sister Therese, and with her made ready for their
+departure. Hoping that England would declare war, I informed the
+professor of my intention to accompany my patients.
+
+"The little Alsatian girl went and asked the German servants to
+carry the luggage to the station for the last civilian train, which
+was to leave at six in the morning.
+
+"I don't mind carrying anything for you, _Schwester_," said the hall
+porter, "but I won't do a thing for those dogs of Russians and
+English."
+
+"The Sister came back and said timidly, 'If the doctor and Your Grace
+don't mind helping me, we might perhaps take at least some of these
+things together.'
+
+"So Wiesdorf station beheld the extraordinary sight of the Duchess
+pulling an enormous portmanteau and perspiring freely, and behind her
+Princess Uriassof, James P., and myself, each pushing a wheelbarrow.
+The station was already thronged with soldiers in _Feldgrau_. We were
+ravenously hungry. I asked the young Alsatian girl to accompany me to
+the refreshment-room, and she was able, thanks to her nurse's
+bonnet, to obtain two pieces of extremely dry bread from the military
+canteen.
+
+"I found my patients ensconced in a fourth-class carriage. Their eyes
+were shut, they were leaning against the duty wooden back of the
+seat, and on their faces was a smile of indescribable bliss.
+
+"The Princess greedily seized the piece of bread I handed her, took
+an enormous bite out of it, and said to the Duchess:
+
+"'What nice bread!'
+
+"'What nice seats!' replied Her Grace, leaning voluptuously against
+the hard, greasy boards."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE BEGINNING OF THE END
+
+  "All the way talking of Russia, which, he says, is a
+   sad place."--Pepys (Sept. 16th, 1664).
+
+
+For three days our soldiers had been advancing over the devastated
+plain of the Somme. The crests of the innumerable shell-holes gave
+the country the appearance of a sort of frozen angry sea. The
+victors were advancing light-heartedly, as though preceded by
+invisible drums.
+
+It was just at the time when the German army was swaying and
+tottering like a spent boxer awaiting the inevitable knock-out.
+
+The Division had suffered heavily. All along the roads they had seen
+for the second time the sinister spectacle of villagers in flight
+and furniture-laden carts drawn by bowed women.
+
+General Bramble had looked at the map with painful astonishment. He
+had been ordered to resist at all costs along the trenches on the
+green line; but when he reached the green line he had found no
+trenches; the Chinamen who were to dig them were still at sea
+somewhere near Suez.
+
+Then, in a corner of a ruined village, they had come across a green
+felt hat and a fearsome moustache, which turned out reassuringly to
+belong to a rocking, tottering old man; and the Tommies--who are a
+primitive and adventurous race--were glad of the protection of this
+wild old totem of the Frankish tribe.
+
+Then came motor-lorries to take the whole Division to the North,
+and through all the bustle and disorder they were conscious of
+a giant hand trying with prudent and skilful movements to
+rebuild the line.
+
+"What can a general do?" the doctor had asked. "This war is too vast
+to be affected by human volition. Victory will come through tiny,
+decisive forces that have been at work since the beginning of the
+world. Tolstoy's Kutusoff used to go to sleep in Council--yet he beat
+Napoleon."
+
+"However vast the scale of circumstance may be," said the colonel, "a
+man can change everything. A child cannot push a railway engine; yet
+he can start it if he opens the right throttle. A man has only to
+apply his will at the right place, and he will be master of the
+world. Your determinism is nothing more than a paradox. You build a
+cage round yourself and then are astonished you are a prisoner."
+
+They were going forward rapidly. Aurelle, mounted on his old white
+Arab, trotted between the doctor and Colonel Parker.
+
+"Don't hold your horse in so tightly, Messiou; give him the rein."
+
+"But the road's full of holes, sir."
+
+"My dear chap, when a man is on a horse, the horse is always the more
+intelligent of the pair."
+
+He slackened his mare's rein to pass by a huge shell-hole, and began
+to talk of the peace that was at hand.
+
+"The most difficult thing of all," he said, "will be to preserve in
+our victory the virtues that won it for us. Germany and Russia will
+do their best to corrupt us. A dishonoured nation always tries to
+bury its shame under the ruins of the victor's civilization. It's the
+device of Samson; it's as old as history itself. Rome, surrounded by
+vanquished and humbled nations, witnessed the lightning speed of
+Judaic preaching, which was so much like the Bolshevism of our day.
+The Russian ghettos of our capitals had their counterpart then in
+the Syrian dens that swarmed in the large ports; that is where the
+apostles of mystical communism preached most successfully. And
+Juvenal and Tacitus, who were gentlemen, had good reason to detest
+those anarchists, who condemned Roman civilization with the fanatical
+fury of a Trotsky."
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, "the danger of these prolonged wars is that
+they end by making the most unusual habits generally acceptable. They
+require courage; and courage is a dangerous virtue, the mother of
+revolutions. And it is not easy to accustom a nation of warriors to
+render due obedience once more to second-rate politicians and
+profiteers. The oligarchy of _parvenus_ which arose after the Punic
+wars could not be respected as the Roman senate had been. They
+possessed neither its hardihood nor its heroic parsimony. Bent only
+on beautiful slaves, perfumes and luxuries, they sacrificed their
+nascent influence to their passion for pleasure. They did not last
+long."
+
+"It is quite certain," the colonel continued, "that in order to
+survive, an aristocracy must be hard upon itself. Moral discipline is
+indispensable to any class that wants to govern. If the industrial
+middle class is to take our place, it will have to be austere and
+hard. What sealed once and for all the doom of the Roman Senators was
+the decadent Greek culture of their sons. Those young noblemen
+affected an elegant dilettantism and toyed pleasantly with cultured
+demagogy. Caesar in his youth, Aurelle, was rather like one of your
+comfortable cultured French middle-class Socialists. His lifelong
+dream was to lead a moderate reform party, but he was embittered by
+the attacks of the Roman patricians. He is a type against whom our
+Public Schools protect us pretty well. We also have our decadent
+young lords, but the contempt of their own generation keeps them from
+doing much harm."
+
+He stopped in order to salute a magpie--for he was very
+superstitious--pointed with his cane to a tank that lay buried on its
+back in the sand like a defeated tortoise, and went on:
+
+"Do you think you will have a revolution in France after the war? If
+you do, I shall be very much surprised. Up till now the remembrance
+of 1793 has kept us looking with apprehension towards France as the
+danger-spot of Europe. To-day we realize our mistake.
+
+"1793 made your country more conservative than any other, by giving
+your peasants the possession of the soil. It will probably be seen
+some years hence that the Russian Revolution has also had the same
+effect. The revolution will end when the Red armies return to Moscow
+and some unemployed Bonapartsky has the Soviets dispersed by his
+grenadiers. Then the _moujiks_ who have acquired the national
+property will form the first layer of a respectable liberal bourgeois
+republic."
+
+"Unless," said Aurelle, "Bonapartsky, having tasted the sweets of
+victory, sets out to conquer Europe with the help of his trusty
+grenadiers. Between the Terror and 'the respectable republic' there
+were twenty years of war, sir."
+
+"The most terrible of all revolutions," began the doctor, "will be
+the English one. In France the intellectual is popular; the tribune
+of the people is a bearded professor with the kindest of hearts. In
+England the people's commissary will be a hard, clean-shaven, silent,
+cruel man."
+
+"That may be," said the colonel; "but he will find more silent and
+still harder men up against him. If you think we are going to lie
+down and submit like the fatalist nobles of Petrograd, you are
+mistaken."
+
+"You, sir? And why the devil should _you_ defend business men and
+profiteers whom you are never tired of sending to perdition?"
+
+"I shall not be defending profiteers, but a form of society which I
+hold to be necessary. The institutions which our ancestors have
+adopted after six thousand years' experience are worth ten times more
+than the systems of foolish and boastful hotheads. I stand always for
+what is."
+
+With a sweeping gesture the doctor pointed to the twisted, rusty
+wire, the shattered walls, the mangled trees and the dense harvest of
+wooden crosses that rose from the barren soil.
+
+"Allow me," he said, "to express the heartfelt admiration I feel
+for this venerable civilization of yours, and let me contemplate the
+fruits of these wise institutions which six thousand years have
+consecrated for you. Six thousand years of war, six thousand years of
+murder, six thousand years of misery, six thousand years of
+prostitution; one half of mankind busy asphyxiating the other half;
+famine in Europe, slavery in Asia, women sold in the streets of Paris
+or London like matches or boot-laces--there is the glorious
+achievement of our ancestors. It is well worth dying to defend, I
+must confess!"
+
+"Yes, doctor," replied Aurelle; "but there are two sides to the
+question: six thousand years of reform, six thousand years of revolt,
+six thousand years of science, six thousand years of philosophy----"
+
+"Now don't you run away with the idea that I'm a revolutionary. As
+far as I am concerned, the movements of men interest me no more than
+those of the spiders or the dogs I am so fond of observing. I know
+that all the speeches in the world will not prevent men from being
+jealous monkeys always greedy for food, females and bright stones. It
+is true that they know how to deck out their desires with a somewhat
+brilliant and delusive ideology, but it is easy for an expert to
+recognize the instinct beneath the thought. Every doctrine is an
+autobiography. Every philosophy demands a diagnosis. Tell me the
+state of your digestion, and I shall tell you the state of your
+mind."
+
+"Oh, doctor, if that is so, life is not worth living."
+
+"That, my boy, depends entirely upon the liver, as they say."
+
+Young Dundas, who had just reined up level with them, interposed:
+
+"My God, my God," he said, "how you chaps do love talking! Why, I
+once had a discussion myself at Oxford with one of those johnnies in
+a bowler hat and ready-made tie who go round and make speeches in
+public squares on Saturday afternoons. I had stopped to listen to him
+on my way back from a bathe. He was cursing the aristocracy, the
+universities, and the world in general. Well, after about five
+minutes' talking, I went right up to him and said, 'Off with your
+coat, my friend; let's go into the matter thoroughly.'"
+
+"And did you convince him, Dundas?"
+
+"It wasn't very difficult, Messiou, because, honestly, I could use
+my left better than he could."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+DANSE MACABRE
+
+  "Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day."--Sir James Fraser.
+
+
+"Doctor," said General Bramble, "this morning I received from London
+two new fox-trots for my gramophone."
+
+Ever since the Armistice sent the Scottish Division into rest on the
+Norman coast, the Infant Dundas had been running a course of
+dancing-lessons at the mess, which were patronized by the most
+distinguished "red-hats."
+
+Aurelle emerged from behind an unfolded copy of the _Times_.
+
+"Things look very rotten," he said. "The Germans are taking heart
+again; you are demobbing; the Americans are sailing away; and soon
+only we and the Italians will be left alone to face the European
+chaos----"
+
+"Aurelle," said Colonel Parker, "take off your coat and come and
+learn the one-step--that'll be a jolly sight better than sitting
+moping there all the evening."
+
+"You know I don't dance, sir."
+
+"You're very silly," said Parker. "A man who doesn't dance is an
+enemy of mankind. The dancer, like the bridge-player, cannot exist
+without a partner, so he can't help being sociable. But you--why, a
+book is all the company you want. You're a bad citizen."
+
+The doctor emptied his glass of brandy at one gulp, removed his coat,
+and joined the colonel in his attack upon the young Frenchman.
+
+"A distinguished Irish naturalist, Mr. James Stephens," he said, "has
+noticed that love of dancing varies according to innocence of
+heart. Thus children, lambs and dogs like dancing. Policemen, lawyers
+and fish dance very little because they are hard-hearted. Worms and
+Members of Parliament, who, besides their remarkable all-round
+culture, have many points in common, dance but rarely owing to the
+thickness of the atmosphere in which they live. Frogs and high hills,
+if we are to believe the Bible----"
+
+"Doctor," interrupted the general, "I put you in charge of the
+gramophone; top speed, please."
+
+The orderlies pushed the table into a corner, and the aide-de-camp,
+holding his general in a close embrace, piloted him respectfully but
+rhythmically round the room.
+
+"One, two ... one, two. It's a simple walk, sir, but a sort of glide.
+Your feet mustn't leave the ground."
+
+"Why not?" asked the general.
+
+"It's the rule. Now twinkle."
+
+"Twinkle? What's that?" asked the general.
+
+"It's a sort of hesitation, sir; you put out your left foot, then you
+bring it sharply back against the right, and start again with the
+right foot. Left, back again, and quickly right. Splendid, sir."
+
+The general, who was a man of precision, asked how many steps he was
+to count before twinkling again. The rosy-cheeked one explained that
+it didn't matter, you could change steps whenever you liked.
+
+"But look here," said General Bramble, "how is my partner to know
+when I'm going to twinkle?"
+
+"Oh," said the aide-de-camp, "you must hold her near enough for her
+to feel the slightest movement of your body."
+
+"Humph!" grunted the general. And after a moment's thought he added,
+"Couldn't you get up some mixed dances here?"
+
+From the depths of the arm-chair came Aurelle's joyful approval.
+
+"I've never been able to make out," he said, "what pleasure you men
+can find in dancing together. Dancing is a sentimental pantomime, a
+kind of language of the body which allows it to express an
+understanding which the soul dare not confess. What was dancing for
+primitive man? Nothing but a barbaric form of love."
+
+"What a really French idea!" exclaimed Colonel Parker. "I should say
+rather that love is a barbaric form of dancing. Love is animal;
+dancing is human. It's more than an art; it's a sport."
+
+"Quite right," said Aurelle. "Since the British nation deems worthy
+of the name of sport any exercise which is at once useless, tiring
+and dangerous, I am quite ready to admit that dancing answers this
+definition in every way. Nevertheless, among savages----"
+
+"Aurelle, my boy, don't talk to me about savages!" said Parker.
+"You've never been out of your beloved Europe. Now I have lived among
+the natives of Australia and Malay; and their dances were not
+sentimental pantomimes, as you call them, at all, but warlike
+exercises for their young soldiers, that took the place of our
+Swedish drill and bayonet practice. Besides, it is not so very long
+since these close embraces were adopted in our own countries. Your
+minuets and pavanes were respecters of persons, and the ancients, who
+liked looking at dancing girls, never stooped to twirling them
+round."
+
+"That's quite easy to understand," put in the doctor. "What did they
+want with dancing? The directness of their customs made such
+artificial devices for personal contact quite unnecessary. It's only
+our Victorian austerity which makes these rhythmical embraces so
+attractive. Puritan America loves to waggle her hips, and----"
+
+"Doctor," said the general, "turn the record over, will you, and put
+on speed eighty; it's a jazz."
+
+"What's worrying me," began Aurelle, who had returned once more to
+his paper, "is that our oracles are taking the theory of nationality
+so seriously. A nation is a living organism, but a nationality is
+nothing. Take the Jugo-Slavs, for instance----"
+
+At that moment the doctor produced such an ear-splitting racket from
+the gramophone that the interpreter let his _Times_ fall to the
+ground.
+
+"By Jove!" he exclaimed; "have you broken it, doctor?"
+
+"Broken it?" repeated the doctor in mild surprise.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that all that noise of broken crockery and
+foghorns was deliberately put together by a human brain?"
+
+"You know nothing about it," said the doctor. "This negro music is
+excellent stuff. Negroes are much finer artists than we are; they
+alone can still feel the holy delirium which ranked the first singers
+among the gods...."
+
+His voice was drowned by the sinister racket of the jazz, which made
+a noise like a barrage of 4.2 howitzers in a thunderstorm.
+
+"Jazz!" shouted the general to his aide-de-camp, bostoning
+majestically the while. "Jazz--Dundas, what _is_ jazz?"
+
+"Anything you like, sir," replied the rosy-cheeked one. "You've just
+got to follow the music."
+
+"Humph!" said the general, much astonished.
+
+"Doctor," said Aurelle gravely, "we may now be witnessing the last
+days of a civilization which with all its faults was not without a
+certain grace. Don't you think that under the circumstances there
+might be something better for us to do than tango awkwardly to this
+ear-splitting din?"
+
+"My dear boy," said the doctor, "what would you do if some one stuck
+a pin into your leg? Well, war and peace have driven more than one
+spike into the hide of humanity; and of course she howls and dances
+with the pain. It's just a natural reflex action. Why, they had a
+fox-trot epidemic just like this after the Black Death in the
+fourteenth century; only then they called it St. Vitus's dance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN
+
+ "But the Glory of the Garden
+  Lies in more than meets the eye."
+              R. Kipling.
+
+
+A farewell dinner was being given to Aurelle by the officers of
+the Scottish Division, with whom he had spent four years of danger
+and hardship.
+
+Before they sat down, they made him drink a cocktail and a glass of
+sherry, and then an Italian vermouth tuned up with a drop of gin.
+Their eager affection, and this curiously un-British mixing of
+drinks, made him feel that on this last evening he was no longer a
+member of the mess, but its guest.
+
+"I hope," said Colonel Parker, "that you will be a credit to the
+education we have given you, and that you will at last manage to
+empty your bottle of champagne without assistance."
+
+"I'll try," said Aurelle, "but the war has ended too soon, and I've
+still a lot to learn."
+
+"That's a fact," grumbled the colonel. "This damned peace has come at
+a most unfortunate moment. Everything was just beginning to get into
+shape. I had just bought a cinema for the men; our gunners were
+working better every day; there was a chance of my becoming a
+general, and Dundas was teaching me jazz. And then the politicians
+poke their noses in and go and make peace, and Clemenceau demobs
+Aurelle! Life's just one damned thing after another!"
+
+"_Wee, Messiou_," sighed General Bramble, "it's a pity to see you
+leaving us. Can't you stay another week?"
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm to be demobbed with the third batch, and
+I've got my warrant in my pocket. I'm to report to-morrow at
+Montreuil-sur-Mer; from there I shall be sent to Arras, and then
+dispatched to Versailles, after which, if I survive the journey, I
+shall be at liberty to return to Paris. I should be delighted to stay
+a few days, but I suppose I must obey the pompous military maxim and
+'share the fortunes of my comrades.'"
+
+"Why," said Colonel Parker, "are people so idiotic as to discharge
+soldiers whose return is dreaded by civilians and whose presence is
+necessary to the comfort of the Staff? We English adopted a much more
+intelligent plan for _our_ demobilization. The men were to be
+classified according to their professions, and were only to be
+released when workmen of their occupation were required in England.
+In this way we were to avoid unemployment trouble. All the details
+were most clearly explained in a bulky volume; it was really an
+excellent plan. Well, when it came to be actually worked, everything
+went as badly as could be. Every one complained; there were small
+riots which were dramatized in the newspapers; and after some weeks'
+trial we returned to your system of classes, Aurelle, which makes for
+equality and is idiotic."
+
+"It was easy to foresee," said the doctor, "that any regulation which
+neglected human nature was bound to fail. Man, that absurd and
+passionate animal, cannot thrive under an intelligent system. To be
+acceptable to the majority a law must be unjust. The French
+demobilization system is inane, and that is why it is so good."
+
+"Doctor," said the general, "I cannot allow you to say that the
+French method is inane; this is the last evening Messiou is spending
+with us, and I will not have him annoyed."
+
+"It doesn't matter a bit," said Aurelle; "neither of them knows what
+he's talking about. It is quite true that things are going rather
+better in France than elsewhere, in spite of absurd decrees and
+orders. But that's not because our laws are unjust; it's because no
+one takes them seriously. In England your weakness is that if you are
+ordered to demobilize men by classes, you'll do it. We _say_ we're
+doing it, but by means of all sorts of reprieves, small
+irregularities and reasonable injustices, we manage _not_ to do it.
+Some barbarous bureaucrat has decreed that the interpreter Aurelle
+should, in order to be demobilized, accomplish the circuit
+Montreuil-Arras-Versailles in a cattle-truck. It is futile and
+vexatious; but do you suppose I shall do it? Never in your life!
+Tomorrow morning I shall calmly proceed to Paris by the express. I
+shall exhibit a paper covered with seals to a scribe at the G.M.P.,
+who will utter a few lamentations as a matter of form, and demobilize
+me with much grumbling. With us the great principle of public justice
+is that no one is supposed to respect the laws; this is what has
+enabled us to beat Germany."
+
+"Humph!" muttered the general, much taken aback.
+
+"Doctor," said Colonel Parker, "help Messiou Aurelle to some
+champagne; his mind is far too clear."
+
+Corks began to pop with the rapidity of machine guns. Colonel Parker
+began a speech about the charming, kind and affectionate disposition
+of the women of Burma; the doctor preferred Japanese women for
+technical reasons.
+
+"French women are also very beautiful," said General Bramble
+politely; for he could not forget this was Aurelle's farewell dinner.
+
+When the orderlies had brought the port, he struck the table twice
+sharply with the handle of his knife, and said, with a pleasant
+mixture of solemnity and geniality:
+
+"Now, gentlemen, as our friend is leaving us after having so
+excellently represented his country amongst us for the last four
+years, I propose that we drink his health with musical honours."
+
+All the officers stood up, glass in hand. Aurelle was about to follow
+their example, when Colonel Parker crushed him with a whispered,
+"_Assee, Messiou, poor l'amoor de Dee-er!_" And the Staff of the
+Scottish Division proceeded to sing with the utmost solemnity,
+keeping their eyes fixed upon the young Frenchman:
+
+  "For he's a jolly good fellow,
+  And so say all of us...."
+
+Aurelle was deeply moved as he gazed at the friendly faces round him,
+and reflected sadly that he was about to leave for ever the little
+world in which he had been so happy. General Bramble was standing
+gravely at attention, and singing as solemnly as if he were in his
+pew in church:
+
+  "For he's a jolly good fellow,
+  And so say all of us...."
+
+Then came much cheering, glasses were drained at a gulp, and young,
+rosy-cheeked Dundas shouted, "Speech, Messiou, speech!"
+
+"Come, Aurelle," said Colonel Parker, "don't you believe you're going
+to get out of it as easily as all that! You must get on your hind
+legs, my boy, and do your bit."
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+"Ah, Messiou," said the general when the ceremony was over and the
+brandy had followed the port, "I hope our two nations will remain
+friends after this war."
+
+"How could it possibly be otherwise, sir? We cannot forget----"
+
+"The duration of our friendship," Colonel Parker put in, "depends
+neither on you, Aurelle, nor on us. The Englishman as an individual
+is sentimental and loyal, but he can only afford the luxury of these
+noble sentiments because the British nation is imbued with a holy
+selfishness. Albion is not perfidious, in spite of what your
+countrymen used to say; but she cannot tolerate the existence of a
+dominant power on the Continent. We love you dearly and sincerely,
+but if you were to discover another Napoleon...."
+
+"Humph!" grunted the general, greatly shocked. "Have some more
+brandy, Messiou?"
+
+"Everything will be all right," said the doctor cynically. "Your
+cotton goods will always cost more than ours, and that is the surest
+guarantee of friendship."
+
+"Why should they cost more?" carelessly asked Aurelle, in whose brain
+the brandy was beginning to produce a pleasant misty feeling.
+
+"My boy," said the doctor, "your Napoleon, of whom Parker is so
+afraid, said we were a nation of shopkeepers. We accept the
+compliment, and our only regret is that we are unable to return it.
+You have three national failings which will always prevent you from
+being dangerous commercial competitors: you are economical, you are
+simple and you are hard-working. That is what makes you a great
+military people; the French soldiers got accustomed to the hardship
+of trench life far more readily than ours. But in peace-time your
+very virtues betray you. In that famous woollen stocking of yours you
+hoard not only your francs but your initiative; and your upper
+classes, being content with bathrooms which our farmers would
+disdain, feel no call to go out and cultivate Indo-China. We never
+invest a penny; so our children have no alternative but to go out
+Empire-building. We must have comfort, which compels us to be
+audacious; and we are extremely lazy, which makes us ingenious."
+
+At this point General Bramble began to emit the series of grunting
+noises which invariably preceded his favourite anecdotes.
+
+"It is quite true," he said proudly, "that we are lazy. One day, just
+after we had made an advance near Cambrai, and the position was still
+uncertain, I sent out an aviator to fly over a little wood and report
+whether the troops that occupied it were French, British or German. I
+watched him executing my order, and when he came back he told me the
+troops were British. 'Are you quite certain?' I asked, 'you didn't go
+very low.' 'It was not necessary, sir. I knew if those men had been
+busy digging trenches, I should have been uncertain whether they
+were French or German; but as they were sitting on the grass, I'm
+sure they are British.'"
+
+It was ten o'clock. The aide-de-camp poured out a whisky and soda for
+his general. A silence ensued, and in the kitchen close by the
+orderlies were heard singing the old war ditties, from "Tipperary" to
+"The Yanks are coming," as was their nightly custom. They made a fine
+bass chorus, in which the officers joined unconsciously.
+
+The singing excited Dundas, who began to yell "view-halloos" and
+smack a whip he took down from the wall. The doctor found a Swiss
+cowbell on the mantelpiece and rang it wildly. Colonel Parker took up
+the tongs and began rapping out a furious fox-trot on the
+mantelshelf, which the general accompanied from his armchair with a
+beatific whistle.
+
+Of the end of the evening Aurelle had but a blurred remembrance.
+Towards one o'clock in the morning he found himself squatting on the
+floor drinking stout beside a little major, who was explaining to him
+that he had never met more respectable women than at Port Said.
+
+Meanwhile Dundas started to chant a ditty about the virtues of one
+notorious Molly O'Morgan; Colonel Parker repeated several times,
+"Aurelle, my boy, don't forget that if Englishmen can afford to make
+fools of themselves, it is only because England is such a devilishly
+serious nation;" and Dr. O'Grady, who was getting to the sentimental
+stage, sang many songs of his native land in a voice that was full of
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LETTER FROM COLONEL PARKER TO AURELLE
+
+  "Tout homme de courage est homme de parole."--Corneille
+
+
+  Stapleton Hall, Stapleton, Kent.
+  _April --, 1920._
+
+My Dear Aurelle,--Much water has passed beneath the bridges since
+your last letter. For one thing, I have become a farmer. When I left
+my staff job I thought of rejoining my old regiment; but it wasn't
+easy, as the battalion is crammed full of former generals who are
+only subalterns.
+
+They are treating the army very unfairly here. Our damned Parliament
+refuses to vote it any money; very little is required of it, it's
+true--it has merely to maintain order in Ireland and to guard the
+Rhine, Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine, Silesia, the
+Caucasus and a few other countries the names of which I can't
+remember! All I can say is, God help England!
+
+We farmers also can do with His help. April is the month for sowing,
+and fine weather is necessary. As far as I am concerned, I had a
+hundred acres of potatoes to sow, and I had made detailed
+preparations for my spring offensive. But, as always happens when the
+poor British start attacking, rain began falling in bucketfuls the
+very first day of operations. The advance had to be stopped after a
+few acres, and public opinion is really much exercised about the
+matter.
+
+Now I want to answer your letter. You say, "Some of you in England
+seem astonished that we refuse to trust the Germans. We are accused
+of a lack of generosity. What a splendid piece of unconscious
+humour! I'd like to see you in our shoes--suppose there were no sea
+between those chaps and yourselves!"
+
+My dear Aurelle, I have often asked you not to confuse the English
+people with their cursed Puritans. There have always been in this
+country a large number of men who have done their best to destroy the
+strength and reputation of our Empire. Up to the time of good Queen
+Bess, these scoundrels were kept in their place, and I often regret I
+was not born in those times. Since then the Puritan element has on
+every occasion displayed its narrow-mindedness and its hatred of
+patriotism and of everything beautiful and joyous. The Puritans
+prefer their opinions to their country, which is an abominable
+heresy. They brought the civil wars upon us at the time of the
+Stuarts; they helped the rebels during the American War of
+Independence and the French during their Revolution. They were
+pro-Boers in the South African War, conscientious objectors in this
+one, and now they are supporting the republican murderers in Ireland,
+trying to undermine the British workman's faith in his King and
+county cricket, and doing their best to encourage the Germans by
+creating difficulties between France and ourselves.
+
+But you must not forget that the magnificent indifference and
+ignorance of our race makes these pedants quite harmless.
+
+You ask me what the average British citizen thinks about it all.
+Well, I'm going to tell you.
+
+What interests the average British citizen beyond everything is the
+match between England and Scotland, which is to be played next
+Saturday at Twickenham, the Grand National, which is to be run next
+week at Liverpool, and Mrs. Bamberger's divorce, which fills the
+newspapers just now.
+
+What does the British citizen think? Well, he went to the war without
+knowing what it was all about, and he has come back from it without
+having gathered any further information. As a matter of fact, he is
+beginning to wonder who won it. You say it was Foch, and we are quite
+ready to believe you; still, it seems to us that our army had a
+little to do with it. The Italians say _they_ struck the decisive
+blow; so do the Serbians and the Portuguese, of course. The Americans
+go about wearing little badges in their buttonholes which proclaim,
+"_We_ did it." Ludendorff claims that the German army won the war.
+I am beginning to ask myself whether _I_ was not the victor. As a
+matter of fact, I'm inclined to think it was you. You kept the Infant
+Dundas quiet; if you hadn't repressed him, he would have kept
+General Bramble from working; the general would have been nervous
+at the time of the attack in April '18, and all would have been lost.
+
+As to international politics I have very little to tell you. I am
+observing the bucolic mind, and am noticing with some anxiety that
+the brain of the countryman is very much like the turnip he grows
+with such perseverance. I am hoping I shall not also develop any
+vegetable characteristics.
+
+You ask whether we are forgetting France. I don't think we are. Do
+you know that we were ready to remit your war debts if America had
+agreed? Not so bad for a nation of shopkeepers, is it? We don't brag
+about our devotion, but we will be with you if anything goes wrong. I
+trust you know us well enough to be quite assured of that.
+
+I am very busy this morning with my favourite sow, who has just
+borne a litter of twelve. She immediately squashed one of them; King
+Solomon was not such a clever judge as he looked, after all. Au
+revoir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GENERAL BRAMBLE'S RETURN
+
+  "The English have a mild aspect and a ringing, cheerful
+   voice."--Emerson.
+
+
+"By Jove," said the Infant Dundas, "this Paris of yours _is_ a jolly
+town."
+
+Beltara the painter had invited Aurelle to spend an evening in his
+studio to meet General Bramble, who was passing through Paris on his
+way to Constantinople, accompanied by Dundas and Dr. O'Grady.
+
+The general was sitting on a divan piled high with many-coloured
+cushions, and gazing with emotion upon the sketch of a nude figure.
+The Greek heads, Etruscan warriors and Egyptian scribes about him
+had the rare and spiritual beauty of mutilated things. Aurelle gazed
+at his old chief as he sat motionless among the statues, and
+consecrated the brief moment of silence to the memory of his virtues.
+
+"A fine woman," exclaimed the general, "a very fine woman indeed!
+What a pity I can't show you a few Soudan negresses, Beltara!"
+
+Beltara interrupted him to introduce one of his friends, Lieutenant
+Vincent, a gunner with a frank, open face. The general, fixing his
+clear gaze on Aurelle, tried to speak of France and England.
+
+"I'm glad, Messiou, that we've come to an understanding at last. I'm
+not very well up in all this business, but I can't stand all these
+bickering politicians."
+
+Aurelle was suddenly conscious of the general's real sincerity and
+anxiety about the future. Lieutenant Vincent came up to them. He
+had the rather wild, attractive grace of the present-day youth. As he
+sat listening to General Bramble's words about English friendship,
+his lips parted as though he was burning to break in.
+
+"Will you allow me, sir," he suddenly interrupted, "to tell you how
+we look at it. Frankly speaking, you English were marvellous during
+the war, but since the Armistice you have been on the wrong tack
+entirely. You are on the wrong tack because you don't know the
+Germans. Now I've just come back from Germany, and it is absolutely
+clear that as soon as those fellows have enough to eat they'll fall
+on us again. _You_ want to get their forgiveness for your victory.
+But why should they accept their defeat? Would you accept it in their
+place?"
+
+"The sense of shame after victory," said the doctor gently, "is a
+sentiment quite natural to barbarous peoples. After employing the
+utmost cruelty during the fight, they come and implore their
+slaughtered enemies' pardon. 'Don't bear us a grudge for having cut
+off your heads,' they say; 'if we had been less lucky you would have
+cut off ours.' The English always go in for this kind of posthumous
+politeness. They call it behaving like sportsmen. It's really a
+survival of the 'enemy's taboo.'"
+
+"It would be quite all right," put in Lieutenant Vincent
+breathlessly, "if you waited to appease the shades of your enemies
+till you were quite certain they were really dead. But the Germans
+are very much alive. Please understand, sir, that I'm speaking
+absolutely without hate. What I mean is that we must destroy
+Carthage--that is German military power--so completely that the very
+idea of revenge will appear absurd to any German with an ounce of
+common sense. As long as there exists at any time the barest chance
+of an enterprise, they will attempt it. I don't blame them in the
+least for it; in fact I admire them for not despairing of their
+country; but our duty--and yours too--is to make such an enterprise
+impossible."
+
+"Yes," said the general in rather feeble French; "but you can't hit a
+man when he's down, can you?"
+
+"It's not a question of being down, sir. Do you know that the three
+big gunpowder factories in Germany pay a dividend of fifteen per
+cent.? Do you know that Krupp is building a factory in Finland in
+order to escape our supervision? Do you realize that in ten years, if
+we don't keep an eye on their chemical factories, the Germans will be
+able to wage a frightful war against us, and use methods of which we
+haven't the slightest inkling? Now why should we run this risk when
+we are clearly in a position to take all precautions for some years
+to come? Carthage _must_ be destroyed, sir. Why, just look at
+Silesia...."
+
+"Every one's talking about Silesia," said the Infant Dundas. "What
+_is_ it, really?"
+
+Vincent, waving his arms despairingly, went to the piano and played a
+long, sad phrase of Borodin, the one which is sung by the recumbent
+woman just before Prince Igor's dances. Before Aurelle's eyes floated
+Northern landscapes, muddy fields and bleeding faces, mingling with
+the women's bare shoulders and the silk embroideries in the studio.
+He was suddenly seized by a healthy emotion, like a breath of fresh
+air, which made him want to ride across the wide world beside General
+Bramble.
+
+"Doctor, can't we remain 'musketeers'?" he said.
+
+"Can't be done," said the doctor sarcastically, "till this damned
+peace ends."
+
+"You hateful person!" said Beltara. "Will you have a whisky and
+soda?"
+
+"What!" exclaimed the general joyfully, "you've got whisky in the
+house, here, in France?"
+
+"It is pleasant to notice," said the doctor, "that the war has been
+of some use after all. Your whisky, Beltara, quite reassures me about
+the League of Nations. As the Entente is necessary to the safety of
+our two countries, the responsibility of preserving good relations
+ought to be given to doctors and psychologists. Such experts would
+make it their business to cultivate those sentiments which tend to
+unite two countries into one. They would remind people, by means of
+noise and military ceremonies, of the great things they had achieved
+together. England would be represented at these functions, as she is
+in the minds of most Frenchmen, by Scotchmen and Australians.
+Bagpipes, kilts, bugles and tam-o'-shanters are far better
+diplomatists than ambassadors are. Pageants, dances, a few
+sentimental anecdotes, exchanges of song, common sports, common
+drinks--these are the essence of a good international policy. The
+Church, which is always so wise and so human, attaches as much
+importance to works as to faith. The outward signs of friendship are
+much more important than friendship itself, because they are
+sufficient to support it."
+
+"Beltara," said the general, "will you ask your friend to play the
+'Destiny Waltz' for Messiou?"
+
+Once more the familiar strains rang out, and brought to mind the
+years of stress and happy comradeship.
+
+"Aurelle, do you remember Marguerite at Amiens--oh, and those two
+little singers at Poperinghe whom I used to call Vaseline and
+Glycerine? They sang English songs without understanding a word, with
+the funniest accent in the world."
+
+"And the Outersteene innkeeper's pretty daughters, Aurelle? Did you
+ever see them again?"
+
+"Goodness knows where they've got to, sir; Outersteene isn't rebuilt
+yet."
+
+"You never got to Salonica, did you? We had Mirka there; a fine pair
+of legs she had too!"
+
+Meanwhile the Infant Dundas had discovered that Lieutenant Vincent
+played tennis, and had struck up a firm friendship. Taking hold of a
+palette, he began to explain a few strokes. "Look here, old man, if
+you cut your service towards the right, your ball will spin from
+right to left, won't it?"
+
+Vincent, who had been somewhat reserved at first, was melting, like
+so many others, before the youthful charm of the Happy Nation.
+
+Soon echoes of the hunt were heard in the studio, and Aurelle
+received full upon his person an orange that spun from right to left.
+
+General Bramble took out his watch and reminded Aurelle he was taking
+the Orient Express. Beltara escorted him to the door, and Aurelle,
+Vincent and the Infant followed behind.
+
+"I like the Vincent boy," said the general to his host. "He's a
+splendid fellow, really splendid! When he came in, I thought he was
+English."
+
+Aurelle wished them a pleasant journey.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Dundas. It was nice seeing you again. I suppose
+you're jolly glad you're going to Constantinople? I rather envy you."
+
+"Yes," said the Infant, "I'm quite bucked about it, because the
+general who was there before us is leaving us a house that's got up
+in absolutely British style; there's a bathroom and a tennis-court.
+So I'll be able to go on practising my overhead service. Splendid,
+isn't it?"
+
+They exchanged greetings and good wishes. The stars were shining in a
+moonless sky. On the pavement in the avenue they heard the
+aide-de-camp changing his step to fit his general's. The door closed
+upon them.
+
+In the gallery, in front of the green bronze warriors with their
+large, staring eyes, the three Frenchmen looked at one another, and
+the corners of their mouths twitched with the same friendly smile.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+Minor typographical errors in the original have been silently
+corrected. Page numbers have been removed from the table of contents
+and page boundaries have been recorded in comments in the html
+markup.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of General Bramble, by Andre Maurois
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