Of course, if an outsider like myself spoke at such times of the day's fighting, the men would lighten up with the interest of professionals, anxious to explain things. "We were on in that ball-room show"; "The ---- and the ---- caught it hot there"; "Nice little bit of shooting the Germans did there"; "Never knew we were hit and stood like sillies"; and then perhaps a stiff argument about the merits of "Ruddy Jim" or "Old Cough-drop," which would, as likely as not, prove to be two of the enemy's batteries that had been giving murderous trouble. No wonder the foreign comrade, with his serious conception of the great danger and great issues that lay behind such affectionate nick-names, would listen astonished, and wonder how they "keep it up." Keep it up? It is just themselves! Unimaginative, humorous, business-like men at their work, boys in their ways of thought and speech off duty. The letters home are on the same reserved but natural note. Professional information being barred, the soldier has had to fall back on the few conventional phrases to express personal feelings, which our tongue-tied nation allows itself. They are learned in childhood, and so come easily. * * * * * It was often the same scene. In some deserted little village, dusty, sun-white, and shuttered, the glimpse of a khaki coat and a sun-red British face has cheered and checked us as we ran through. Pleasant to hear the broad easy tongue; and we retire to the one little wine-shop, that still keeps open because it is near a base-camp. The rumour of English newspapers in some unaccountable way gets abroad. Soon there are a dozen or more khaki caps crowded in the little room. The few peasants left drift in there too. The usual long handshakes, absurd French tags of talk. The soldiers are plundered of their last emblems, as mementoes. Not a village in the war area where one does not see peasant caps and peasant frocks decorated proudly with the insignia of some one of the British regiments. Then comes talk of the chance of getting a letter home. Half of the men retire to violent wrestles with foreign pens and ink at the table in the rear of the shop: the rest stay yarning. The letters are always read aloud or left open as a point of honour; but I had never once to suggest the omission of a line which gave place or date or regimental names. The tradition of the silent war has gone deep. Further, very few either knew or cared where they were or had been. The names meant nothing. Even the sense of time had been lost in the constant occupation and the turning of day into night. * * * * * Certainly the letters I saw at that end were far less picturesque than those published in the papers; but the latter, of course, are a selected number. The traditional "English tongue" learned in the elementary school, with its stiff conventions, held the paper. These scraps are typical of many read to me: