During the day and a half that we stood out in the Channel fog, wondering whether we should ever reach land, or whether a stray German submarine would send us to a higher sphere, we had plenty of time to look about the ship. She was an India liner which had been pressed into service as a troop ship; and the Hindu stewards looked after our many wants as only the Oriental can. What a far-reaching cosmopolitanism emanates from that little land of Britain! Here were English officers giving orders to the Hindus in their own mysterious tongue; and the deference with which these men obeyed helped us to realise Britain’s greatness. To conquer a country, tame it, civilise it—sometimes by force—and still retain the love and respect of its inhabitants, is a power given to but few peoples; yet Britons possess it to the full. On Sunday morning—a bright warm day in early November—our ship steamed slowly into the port of Le Havre. We lingered a few minutes near a high stone quay. Close beside us was a Belgian hospital ship, its white and green paint and big red crosses contrasting strangely with our own dull grey. We could see the nurses and medical officers on board ministering to their patients with tender care and solicitude. We were steaming slowly through a narrow channel between block after block of wharves, where ships unnumbered piled their ocean freight. Finally we emerged into a great basin filled with craft, both large and small, some of which were dismantled. Across the bay a splendid ocean liner reared her four smokeless funnels toward the sky; she was one of that great fleet of passenger ships, so recently the pride of France, now thrust aside by the stern demands of ruthless war. At length we docked, and as we stood leaning over the rail, some little children came running down the quay to greet us. "_Messieurs! Messieurs! Bon jour!_" they cried; and then for the first time we realised that we were in a foreign land. _France, la belle France_! How often have we dreamed of you in better days! Bright, vivacious France, whose wit and laughter sparkled like champagne, whose joy was ever rampant! How soon your smiles and tears were to intermingle with our own! But the soldiers on board had not yet learned to speak in French, and they responded in our own dull tongue: "Good-day, little girls. Hello, little boys," and they dropped silver coins and pennies on the quay. The French children had already learned a word or two of English, and they had also discovered that the Tommy understood two very useful French words. Not to be outdone in courtesy, they flung them up to us in piping chorus: "Good-night, cigarette, souvenir!" How many thousand times we have since heard this same greeting! It has become the children’s formula, and as a gracious concession to our ignorance of French has met its just reward—in pennies.