Brand was staring at a column of troops--all young fellows of the 4th Division. His eyes were glistening, with moisture in them. “Reprieved!” he said. “The last of our youth is saved!” He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in the deepest melancholy. “You and I ought to be dead. So many kids were killed. We’ve no right to be alive.” “Perhaps there is other work to do,” I answered him, weakly, because I had the same thought. He did not seem sure of that. “I wonder!... If we could help to save the next generation.” In the Place d’Armes of Valenciennes there was a great crowd, and many of our generals and staff officers on the steps and below the steps of the Hôtel de Ville. Brand and I caught a glimpse of Colonel Lavington, looking very gallant and debonair, as usual. Beside him was Charles Fortune, with his air of a staff officer dreadfully overworked in the arrangement of victory, modest in spite of his great achievements, deprecating any public homage that might be paid him. This careful mask of his was slightly disarranged for a moment when he winked at me under the very nose of the great general whom he had set to music--“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche,” who stood magnificent with his great chest emblazoned with ribbons. The Prince of Wales was there, shifting from one leg to another, chatting gaily with a group of staff officers. A bevy of French girls advanced with enormous bouquets and presented them to the Prince and his fellow officers. The Prince laughed and blushed like a schoolboy, sniffed at the flowers, did not know what to do with them. The other officers held the bouquets with equal embarrassment, with that strange English shyness which not even war could cure. Some officers close to me were talking of the German plea for armistice. “It’s abject surrender!” said one of them. “The end!” said another, very solemnly. “Thank God!” “The end of a dirty business!” said a young machine-gun officer. I noticed that he had three wound-stripes. One of them, holding a big bouquet, began to dance, pointing his toes, cutting abbreviated capers in a small space among his comrades. “Not too quick for me, old dears! Back to peace again!... Back to life! Hooray!”