and dormer-chambers.
Some of those little provincial towns have hardly changed since
D'Artagnan and his Musketeers rode on their way to great adventures
in the days of Richelieu and Mazarin. And the spirit of D'Artagnan was
still bred in them, in the France of Poincare, for they are the dwelling-
places of young men in the cuirassiers and the chasseurs who had
been chasing Uhlans through the passes of the Vosges, capturing
outposts even though the odds were seven to one.

The English officers and men will never have to complain of their
welcome in France. It was overwhelming--even a little intoxicating to
young soldiers. As they marched through the towns peasant girls ran
along the ranks with great bouquets of wild flowers, which they thrust
into the soldiers' arms. In every market square where the regiments
halted for a rest there was free wine for any thirsty throat, and soldier
boys from Scotland or England had their brown hands kissed by girls
who were eager for hero worship and had fallen in love with these
clean-shaven lads and their smiling grey eyes. In those early days
there seemed no evil in the worship of the women nor in the hearts of
the men who marched to the song of "Tipperary." Every man in khaki
could claim a hero's homage for himself on any road in France, at
any street corner of an old French town. It was some time before the
romance wore off, and the realities of human nature, where good is
mixed with evil and blackguardism marches in the same regiment
with clean-hearted men, destroyed some of the illusions of the French
and demanded an iron discipline from military police and made poor
peasant girls repent of their abandonment in the first ecstasy of their
joyous welcome.

16

Not yet did the brutalities of the war spoil the picture painted in khaki
tones upon the green background of the French countryside. From
my notebook I transcribe one of the word pictures which I wrote at the
time. It is touched with the emotion of those days, and is true to the
facts which followed:

"The weather has been magnificent. It has been no hardship to sleep
out in the roads and fields at night. A harvest moon floods the country
with silver light and glints upon the stacked bayonets of this British
Army in France when the men lie down beneath their coats, with their
haversacks as pillows. Each sleeping figure is touched softly by those
silver rays while the sentries pace up and down upon the outskirts of
th