There was not necessarily opposition between "poilu" and "pekin" (as the civilian is amusingly called by the army), but there was, nevertheless, a gulf fixed between the two: the one had seen visions and experienced realities which were denied the other in his peaceful civilian path. It made all the difference in the world. Whatever his sympathy, the civilian brother had not suffered as had the "poilu"; he had been immune from the hourly risk, he had not endured cold and hunger; he had not lain out in the frosty moonlight, in the No Man’s Land of the trenches, terribly wounded by one of the murderous engines of war; he had not known the anguish of mind in hospital, the doubt whether the limb could be saved or not, or whether he must go through life halt and maimed. No, for all his sympathy and moral suffering, the civilian had not reached the experiences of the other. Reflections of this sort no doubt obtruded on the mind of the soldier in his hours of lonely watch. Sometimes, when echoes of the old life were wafted back to him in the trenches, or when he saw the report in newspapers of some futile discussion in the Chamber, a smile of disdain crossed his lips. Frankly, he was a little tired of this sort of thing. "If the Deputies were here, they would not talk quite so loudly," he reflected with bitterness. And then the headings of another column caught his eye: "Great scandal, a contractor charged with fraud! Huge and hidden profits." "Ah!" he exclaims, and his lips purse again. This time his comments are far severer than against the Parliamentarians. "After all," he says, "those Deputies are paid to talk; it is their business; but the blackguards who make money out of us, out of our lives and limbs——" The phrase is never finished, but the intonation leaves you in no doubt as to the fate of the offenders if they had fallen into his hands. On the following day, perhaps, he sees another scandal of the sort, and now his anger knows no bounds. "What—again? Then they are all at it!" he exclaims. In his excited imagination a considerable part of civilian France is engaged in plundering military France. Happily, there was great exaggeration in his sweeping assumptions. Certainly there were scandals in France during the Great War, as there were scandals elsewhere; but they were few and far between—so few that their rarity magnified their importance.