tel I overheard
a conversation between a young waiter and three of our cavalry officers.
They had been in the same fight in the village of Noyelles, near
Cambrai, a tiny place of ruin, where they had crouched under machine-gun
fire. The waiter drew a diagram on the table-cloth. "I was just there."
The three cavalry officers laughed. "Extraordinary! We were a few
yards away." They chatted with the waiter as though he were an old
acquaintance who had played against them in a famous football-match.
They did not try to kill him with a table-knife. He did not put poison
in the soup.

That young waiter had served in a hotel in Manchester, where he had
served a friend of mine, to whom he now expressed his opinion on the
folly of the war, and the criminality of his war lords, and things in
general. Among these last he uttered an epigram which I remember for its
brutal simplicity. It was when a staff-officer of ours, rather the worse
for wine, had been making a scene with the head waiter, bullying him in
a strident voice.

"Some English gentlemen are swine," said the young waiter. "But all
German gentlemen are swine."

Some of our officers and men billeted in houses outside Cologne or
across the Rhine endeavored to stand on distant terms with the "Huns."
But it was impossible to be discourteous when the old lady of the house
brought them an early cup of coffee before breakfast, warmed their boots
before the kitchen fire, said, "God be praised, the war is over." For
English soldiers, anything like hostility was ridiculous in the presence
of German boys and girls who swarmed round their horses and guns, kissed
their hands, brought them little pictures and gifts.

"Kids are kids," said a sergeant-major. "I don't want to cut their
throats! Queer, ain't it?"

Many of the "kids" looked half starved. Our men gave them bread and
biscuit and bully beef. In Cologne the people seemed pleased to see
British soldiers. There was no sense of humiliation. No agony of
grief at this foreign occupation. Was it lack of pride, cringing--or a
profound relief that the river of blood had ceased to flow and even a
sense of protection against the revolutionary mob which had looted their
houses before our entry? Almost every family had lost one son. Some of
them two, three, even five sons, in that orgy of slaughter. They had
paid a dreadful price for pride. Their ambition had been drowned in
blood.

In the restaurants orchestras played gay music.