Good-bye!

Five minutes later, as we reached the top of the Street, the
bombardment began.

CHAPTER XXV

VOLUNTEERS AND PATRIOTS

I hold a strong brief for the English: For the English at home,
restrained, earnest, determined and unassuming; for the English in the
field, equally all of these things.

The British Army has borne attacks at La Bassee and Ypres, positions
so strategically difficult to hold that the Germans have concentrated
their assaults at these points. It has borne the horrors of the
retreat from Mons, when what the Kaiser called "General French's
contemptible little army" was forced back by oncoming hosts of many
times its number. It has fought, as the English will always fight,
with unequalled heroism but without heroics.

To-day, after many months of war, the British Army in the field is as
smart, in a military sense, as tidy--if it will forgive me the
word--as well ordered, as efficiently cared for, as the German Army
was in the beginning. Partly this is due to its splendid equipment.
Mostly it is due to that fetish of the British soldier wherever he may
be--personal neatness.

Behind the lines he is jaunty, cheerful, smart beyond belief. He hates
the trenches--not because they are dangerous or monotonous but because
it is difficult to take a bath in them. He is four days in the
trenches and four days out. On his days out he drills and marches, to
get back into condition after the forced inaction of the trenches. And
he gets his hair trimmed.

There is something about the appearance of the British soldier in the
field that got me by the throat. Perhaps because they are, in a sense,
my own people, speaking my tongue, looking at things from a view-point
that I could understand. That partly. But it was more than that.

These men and boys are volunteers, the very flower of England. They
march along the roads, heads well up, eyes ahead, thousands of them.
What a tragedy for the country that gives them up! Who will take their
places?--these splendid Scots with their picturesque kilts, their
bare, muscular knees, their great shoulders; the cheery Irish,
swaggering a bit and with a twinkle in their blue eyes; these tall
young English boys, showing race in every line; these dashing
Canadians, so impressive that their every appearance on a London
street was certain to set the crowds to cheering.

I saw them in London, and later on I saw them at the front. Still
later I saw them again, pr