It was good, regular soldier talk, very “homey” to me. As you will observe, I have not elided the h’s. Indeed, Tommy has a way of prefixing his h’s to the right vowels more frequently than a generation ago. The “Soldiers Three” type has passed. Popular education will have its way and induce better habits. Believing in the old remedy for exhaustion and exposure to cold, the army served out a tot of rum every day to the men. But many of them are teetotalers, these hardy regulars, and not even Mulvaney will think them effeminate when they have seen fighting which makes anything Mulvaney ever saw child’s play. So they asked for candy and chocolate, instead of rum. Some people have said that Tommy has no patriotism. He fights because he is paid and it is his business. That is an insinuation. Tommy doesn’t care for the “hero stuff,” or for waving flags and speech-making. Possibly he knows how few Germans that sort of thing kills. His weapons are bullets. To put it cogently, he is fighting because he doesn’t want any Kaiser in his. Is not that what all the speeches in Parliament are about and all the editorials and the recruiting campaign? Is not that what England and France are fighting for? It seems to me that Tommy’s is a very practical patriotism, free from cant; and the way that he refuses to hate or to get excited, but sticks to it, must be very irritating to the Germans. “Would you like a _Boche_ helmet for a souvenir, sir?” asked a soldier, who appeared on the outer edge of the group. He was the small, active type, a British soldier with the _élan_ of the Frenchman. “There are lots of them out there among the German dead”--the unburied German dead, who fell like grass before the mower in a desperate and futile counter-attack to recover Neuve Chapelle. “I’ll have one for you on your way back.” There was no stopping him; he had gone. “Matty’s a devil!” said the big man. “He’ll get it, all right. He’s equal to reaching over the _Boches_’ parapet and picking one off a _Boche’s_ head!” As we proceeded on our way, officers came out of the little houses to meet Captain P---- and the stranger civilian. They had to come out, as there was no room to take us inside; and sometimes they talked shop together after I had answered the usual question, “Is America against us?” There seemed to be an idea that we were, possibly because of the prodigious advertising tactics of a minority. But any feeling that we might be did not interfere with their simple courtesy, or lead them to express any bitterness or break into argument. “How are things going on over your side?” “Nicely.” “Any shelling?” “A little this morning. No harm done.” “We cleaned out one bad sniper to-day.” “Ought to have some sandbags up to-night.” “It’s a bad place there. They’ve got a machine gun trained which has quite a sweep. I asked if the artillery shouldn’t put in a word, but the general didn’t think it worth while.”