ship and a
battalion. A little island in the Mediterranean raised the King's Own
Malta Regiment. Uganda and Nyassaland raised and supported the King's
African Rifles--five thousand strong. The British colonies on the
other seaboard of the continent increased the West African Field Force
to seven thousand men. The fishermen and lumbermen from Newfoundland
won imperishable glory on the Somme. From the coral atolls of the
Fijis hastened six score volunteers. The Falkland Islands, south of
South America, raised 140 men. From the Yukon, Sarawak, Wei-hai-wei,
the Seychelles, Hong-Kong, Belize, Saskatchewan, Aden, Tasmania,
British Guiana, Sierra Leone, St. Helena, the Gold Coast, poured
Europeward, at the summons of the Motherland, an endless stream of
fighting men.

Scattered in trenches and tents, in barracks and billets over the
whole of Northern France are men hailing from the uttermost parts of
the earth. Some there are who have spent their lives searching for
gold by the light of the Aurora Borealis and others who have delved
for diamonds on the South African veldt. Some have ridden range on the
plains of Texas and others on the plains of Queensland. When, in the
recreation huts, the phonograph plays "_Home, Sweet Home_" the
thoughts of some drift to nipa-thatched huts on flaming tropic
islands, some think of tin-roofed wooden cottages in the environs of
Sydney or Melbourne, others of staid, old-fashioned, red-brick houses
in Halifax or Quebec.

Serving as a connecting-link between the British and the French and
Belgian armies is a corps of interpreters known as the _liaison_. As
there are well over two million Englishmen in France, a very small
percentage of whom have any knowledge of French, the _liaison_ enjoys
no sinecure. To assist in the billeting of British battalions in
French villages, to conduct negotiations with the canny countryfolk
for food and fodder, to mollify angry housewives whose menages have
been upset by boisterous Tommies billeted upon them, to translate
messages of every description, to interrogate peasants suspected of
espionage--these are only a few of the duties which the _liaison_
officers are called upon to perform. The corps is recruited from
Englishmen who have been engaged in business in Paris, habitues of the
Riviera, students of the Latin Quarter, French hairdressers, head
waiters, and ladies' tailors who have learned English "as she is
spoke" in London's West End. The officers of the