that the
"Chief" should give me permission to go to the front, and he had not
yet returned.

"How about seeing the Indians?" asked Colonel Fitzgerald, turning from
the map.

"I should like it very much."

The young officer was turned to, and agreed, like a British patriot
and gentleman, to show me the Indian villages. General Huguet offered
his car. The officer got his sheepskin-lined coat, for the weather was
cold.

"Thirty shillings," he said, "and nothing goes through it!"

I examined that coat. It was smart, substantial, lined throughout with
pure white fur, and it had cost seven dollars and a half.

There is a very popular English word just making its place in America.
The word is "swank." It is both noun and verb. One swanks when one
swaggers. One puts on swank when one puts on side. And because I hold
a brief for the English, and because I was fortunate enough to meet
all sorts of English people, I want to say that there is very little
swank among them. The example of simplicity and genuineness has been
set by the King and Queen. I met many different circles of people.
From the highest to the lowest, there was a total absence of that
arrogance which the American mind has so long associated with the
English. For fear of being thought to swagger, an Englishman will
understate his case. And so with the various English officers I met at
the front. There was no swank. They were downright, unassuming,
extremely efficient-looking men, quick to speak of German courage,
ready to give the benefit of the doubt where unproved outrages were in
question, but rousing, as I have said, to pale fury where their troops
were being unfairly attacked.

While the car was being brought to the door General Huguet pointed out
to me on the map where I was going. As we stood there his pencil drew
a light semicircle round the town of Ypres.

"A great battle," he said, and described it. Colonel Fitzgerald took
up the narrative. So it happened that, in the three different staff
headquarters, Belgian, French and English, executive officers of the
three armies in the western field described to me that great
battle--the frightful slaughter of the English, their re-enforcement
at a critical time by General Foch's French Army of the North, and the
final holding of the line.

The official figures of casualties were given me again: English
forty-five thousand out of a hundred and twenty thousand engaged; the
French seventy thousand, and