what hopes! Bully beef from Chicago and Argentina is no food for
babes, but better than "K.K." bread--what hopes! Mr. Thomas Atkins,
British regular, takes things as they come--and a lot of them come--
shells, bullets, asphyxiating gas, grenades, and bombs.

There is much to be thankful for. The King's Own Particular Fusiliers,
as we shall call this regiment, had only three men hit yesterday. On
every man's cap is a metal badge crowded with battle honours, from
the storming of Quebec to the relief of Ladysmith. Heroic its history;
but no battle honours equal that of the regiment's part in the second
battle of Ypres; and no heroes of the regiment's story, whom you
picture in imagination with haloes of glory in the wish that you might
have met them in the flesh in their scarlet coats, are the equal of
these survivors in plain khaki manning a ditch in A.D. 1915, whom
anyone may meet.

But do not tell them that they are heroes. They will deny it on the
evidence of themselves as eyewitnesses of the action. To remark
that the K.O.P.F. are brave is like remarking that water flows down
hill. It is the business of the K.O.P.F. to be brave. Why talk about it?

One of the three men hit was killed. Well, everybody in the war rather
expects to be killed. The other two "got tickets to England," as they
say. My lady will take the convalescents joy-riding in her car, and
afterwards seat them in easy chairs, arranging the cushions with her
own hands, and feed them slices of cold chicken in place of bully beef
and strawberries and cream in place of ration marmalade. Oh, my!
What hopes!

Mr. Atkins does not mind being a hero for the purposes of such
treatment. Then, with never a twinkle in his eye, he will tell my lady
that he does not want to return to the front; he has had enough of it,
he has. My lady's patriotism will be a trifle shocked, as Mr. Atkins
knows it will be; and she will wonder if the "stick it" quality of the
British soldier is weakening, as Mr. Atkins knows she will. For he has
more kinks in his mental equipment than mere nobility ever guesses,
and he is having the time of his life in more respects than
strawberries and cream. What hopes! Of course, he will return and
hold on in the face of all that the Germans can give, without any
pretence to bravery.

If you go as a stranger into the trenches on a sightseeing tour and
says, "How are you?" and, "Are you going to Berlin?" and, "Are you
comfortable?" etc., Tommy At