It was strange to hear the pipes of the Highlanders skirl shrilly through old Boulogne, and to catch the sound of English voices in the clarion notes of the "Marseillaise," but, strangest of all to French ears, to listen to that new battle-cry, "Are we down-hearted?" followed by the unanswerable "No--o--o!" of every regiment. And then the lilt of that new marching song to which Tommy Atkins has given immortality:-- "IT'S A LONG, LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY"[B] Up to mighty London came an Irishman one day; As the streets are paved with gold, sure ev'ry one was gay, Singing songs of Piccadilly, Strand and Leicester Square, Till Paddy got excited, then he shouted to them there: CHORUS It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go; It's a long way to Tipperary, To the sweetest girl I know! Good-by Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square. It's a long, long way to Tipperary, But my heart's right there! It's a' there! Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly O', Saying, "Should you not receive it, write and let me know! If I make mistakes in spelling, Molly dear," said he, "Remember it's the pen that's bad, don't lay the blame on me." (_Chorus_) Molly wrote a neat reply to Irish Paddy O', Saying, "Mike Maloney wants to marry me, and so Leave the Strand and Piccadilly, or you'll be to blame, For love has fairly drove me silly--hoping you're the same!" (_Chorus_) It may seem odd that the soldier should care so little for martial songs, or the songs that are ostensibly written for him; but that is not the fault of Tommy Atkins. Lyric poets don't give him what he calls "the stuff." He doesn't get it even from Kipling; Thomas Hardy's "Song of the Soldiers" leaves him cold. He wants no epic stanzas, no heroic periods. What he asks for is something simple and romantic, something about a girl, and home, and the lights of London--that goes with a swing in the march and awakens tender memories when the lilt of it is wafted at night along the trenches. And so "Tipperary" has gone with the troops into the great European battlefields, and has echoed along the white roads and over the green fields of France and Belgium. On the way to the front the progress of our soldiers was made one long fete: it was "roses, roses, all the way." In a letter published in _The Times_, an artillery officer thus describes it: