lied armies.

Though for the moment the Mad Major had disappeared from our view, we were
to hear more of him later on.

CHAPTER VII

WHO STARTED THE WAR?

The wisest thing that our commanders did was to sandwich the Canadian boys
in with the British regulars. Without a doubt we of the First Division were
the greenest troops that ever landed in France.

In two short turns that we spent with the British, we learned more than we
could have otherwise in a month's training. We also became inspired with
that "Keep cool and crack a joke" spirit that is so splendidly Anglo-Saxon.

I am not an Englishman, and I did not think very much of an Englishman
before going overseas. I regarded him more or less as not "worth while." It
did not take a year to convince me that the Englishman is very much "worth
while."

The English soldier chums up quickly. The traditional formality and
conventionality of the English are traditions only. There is none of it in
the trenches.

Discipline there is, strict discipline, among men and officers. Between
officer and man there is a marked respect, and a marked good fellowship
which never degenerates into familiarity.

There is love between the English officer and the English soldier. A love
that has been proved many times, when the commissioned man has sacrificed
his life to save the man of lower rank; when the private has crossed the
pathway of hell itself to save a fallen leader.

The English soldier, and when I say English I mean to include Welsh, Scotch
and Irish, reserves to himself the right to "grouse." He grouses at
everything great or small which has no immediate or vital bearing on the
situation. As soon as anything arises that would really warrant a
grouse--napoo! Tommy Atkins then begins to smile. He grouses when he has to
clean his buttons; he grouses loudly and fiercely when a puttee frays to
rags, and he grouses when his tea is too hot.

But when Tommy runs out of ammunition, is partly surrounded by the enemy,
is almost paralyzed by bombardment; when he is literally in the last ditch,
with a strip of cold steel the only thing between him and death--then
Tommy smiles, then he cracks a joke. Without a thought of himself, without
a murmur, he faces any desperate plight.

He smiles as he rattles his last bullet into place; he grins as his bayonet
snaps from the hilt, and he goes to it hand-to-hand with doubled fists, a
tag of a song on his lips, for "Death or Glory."