One of the corroborating proofs that this is after all not a king's war, but a people's war, is found in the kind of stories they were forever telling Henry and me about the war. They are not hero stories. Mostly they are funny stories, more or less gently guying the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war," for it is the proud boast of the British army that this is a noncoms' war. Doubtless the stories have small basis in fact, but the currency of these blithe stories reflects the popular mind. Thus they say that when General Haig and his staff came down to review the Canadian troops and pin a carload of hardware on their men for bravery in battle, medals of one sort and another, the Canadian General lined his huskies up, and as the staff approached he cried anxiously, "Say, boys--here he comes. Now see if you can't stand to attention, and for Heaven's sake, fellows, don't call me Bill while he is here!" And then they say that after the heavy hardware and shelf goods were distributed a British officer lifted his voice to say: "Men, you have written a brave page upon our history. No more splendid courage than yours ever has been known in the annals of our proud race. But with such magnificent courage, why can you not display other soldierly qualities. Why are you so loose in your discipline? Why don't you treat your officers with more respect?" And in the pause a voice from the ranks replied, "They're not a bad lot, sir. We like 'em all right. But we have 'em along for mascots!" The French also seem to have their easy-going ways. For current smoking room fiction relates that last spring after a troop of French soldiers had been hauled out to be shot for refusing to go into battle under orders, a whole division revolted and demanded new officers--and got new officers--before they would move forward. And the same smoking room fiction says that in the revolt the men were right and the officers wrong. "Why," asked a new English officer of some Russian troops who had made a splendid assault on a German position in the spring of 1917, an assault that required high courage and great soldierly skill, "why did you men all lift up your hands just before the charge was made?" The noncom grinned and answered, "We were taking a vote upon the matter of the charge, sir!" In a theater on the boulevards in Paris recently a hit was made by introducing a stage scene showing the princes and nobility in poverty, looking down from a gallery at the top of the theater, on the rich working people in the boxes below; the princes and nobility were singing a doleful ditty and dancing a sad dance about the changed circumstances that were glooming up the world.