CHAPTER III AT AGINCOURT AND YPRES I Shakespeare seems to have known what there is to be known about our Great War of 1914-18. And he was not censored. So he put into his _Henry IV_ and _Henry V_ a lot of little things that our press had to leave out at the time for the good of the country. If you look closely you can see them lying about all over the plays. There is the ugly affair of the pyx, at Corbie, on the Somme; there are the little irregularities in recruiting; there are the small patches of baddish _moral_ on the coast and even in Picardy; there is the painful case of the oldish lieutenant who drank and had cold feet, after talking bigger than anyone else. One almost expects to find something in _Henry V_ about the mutiny at Etaples, or the predilection of the Australians for chickens. Anyhow, there is a more understanding account than any war correspondent has given of English troops about to go into battle. Timing it for the morning of Agincourt, Shakespeare shows us three standard types of the privates who were to win the Great War. One of them, Court, says little; he just looks out for the dawn. We all know Court; he has won many battles. Bates, the second man, gives tongue pretty freely. Bates is not ruled by funk, but he professes it. "He (the King) may show what outward courage he will, but I believe, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the Thames up to the neck, and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here." Bates, being dead, yet liveth, like Court. In 1915, as in 1415, he was prosecuting his conquests in France, and his unaltered soul was fortifying itself with chants like Far, far away would I be, Where the Alleyman cannot catch me, and Oh my! I don't want to die, _I_ want to go home,