"I censored his stuff," said another. "I didn't think much of it, but I made almost no changes. Some of it was a little subtle, but I let it get by." "I heard him out here," said a third officer, "and he talked no end of rot. He said the Germans had made a botch of destroying towns. He said he could have done more damage to Arras with a hammer than the Germans did with their shells. Of course, he couldn't begin to do it with a hammer, and, anyway, he wouldn't be let. I suppose he never thought of that. Then he said that the Germans were doing us a great favor by their air raids. He said they were smashing up things that were ugly and unsanitary. That's silly. We could pull them down ourselves, you know, and, anyhow, in the last raid they hit the postoffice." "The old boy's got nerve, though," interrupted another officer. "I was out at the front with him near Arras and there was some pretty lively shelling going on around us. I told him to put on his tin hat, but he wouldn't do it. I said, 'Those German shell splinters may get you,' and he laughed and said if the Germans did anything to him they'd be mighty ungrateful, after all he'd done for them. He don't know the Boche." "He told me," added a British journalist, "'when I want to know about war I talk to soldiers.' I asked him: 'Do you mean officers or Tommies?' He said that he meant Tommies. "Now you know how much reliance you can put in what a Tommy says. He'll either say what he thinks you want him to say or what he thinks you don't want him to say. I told Shaw that, but he paid no attention." Here the first officer chimed in again. "Well, I stick to what I've said right along. I don't see where Shaw's funny. I think he's silly." The major who sat at the head of the table deftly turned the conversation away from literary controversy. "What did you think of Conan Doyle?" he said. * * * * * Bright and early next morning we started out to follow in the footsteps of Shaw. We went through country which had been shocked and shaken by both sides in their battles and then dynamited in addition by the retreating Germans. I stood in Peronne which the Germans had dynamited with the greatest care. They left the town for dead, but against a shattered wall was a sign which read, "Regimental cinema tonight at the Splinters--CHARLIE CHAPLIN IN SHANGHAIED." This was first aid. A frozen man is rubbed with snow and a town which has suffered German frightfulness is regaled with Charlie Chaplin.