ntimental 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 sitt