be so many men on chairs
while war was going on--"

A hand protruded from the rank and made trial of space--"No more sauce
falling"--"Then we're going out, bet your life on it." So "March!" was
the cry.

The storm held its peace. We filed off in the long narrow swamp
stagnating in the bottom of the trench where the moment before it had
shaken under slabs of rain. Volpatte's grumbling began again amidst our
sorry stroll and the eddies of floundering feet. I listened to him as I
watched the shoulders of a poverty-stricken overcoat swaying in front
of me, drenched through and through. This time Volpatte was on the
track of the police--

"The farther you go from the front the more you see of them."

"Their battlefield is not the same as ours."

Tulacque had an ancient grudge against them. "Look," he said, "how the
bobbies spread themselves about to get good lodgings and good food, and
then, after the drinking regulations, they dropped on the secret
wine-sellers. You saw them lying in wait, with a corner of an eye on
the shop-doors, to see if there weren't any poilus slipping quietly
out, two-faced that they are, leering to left and to right and licking
their mustaches."

"There are good ones among 'em. I knew one in my country, the Cote
d'Or, where I--"

"Shut up!" was Tulacque's peremptory interruption; "they're all alike.
There isn't one that can put another right."

"Yes, they're lucky," said Volpatte, "but do you think they're
contented? Not a bit; they grouse. At least," he corrected himself,
"there was one I met, and he was a grouser. He was devilish bothered by
the drill-manual. 'It isn't worth while to learn the drill
instruction,' he said, 'they're always changing it. F'r instance, take
the department of military police; well, as soon as you've got the gist
of it, it's something else. Ah, when will this war be over?' he says."

"They do what they're told to do, those chaps," ventured Eudore.

"Surely. It isn't their fault at all. It doesn't alter the fact that
these professional soldiers, pensioned and decorated in the time when
we're only civvies, will have made war in a damned funny way."

"That reminds me of a forester that I saw as well," said Volpatte, "who
played hell about the fatigues they put him to. 'It's disgusting,' the
fellow said to me, 'what they do with us. We're old non-coms., soldiers
that have done four years of service at least. We're paid on the higher
scale, it's true, but what o