Here Fortune heaved a deep sigh, and looked like a Field Marshal while he waited for the roar of cheers which greeted his words. The mystical look on his face became intensified as he stood there, a fine heroic figure (a trifle stout, for lack of exercise), until he suddenly caught sight of a nice-looking girl in the crowd nearest to him, and gave her an elaborate wink, as much as to say, “You and I understand each other, my pretty one! Beneath this heroic pose I am really human.” The effect of that wink was instantaneous. The girl blushed vividly and giggled, while the crowd shouted with laughter. “_Quel numéro! Quel drôle de type!_” said a man by my side. Only the four gentleman of the Town Hall, who had resumed their top-hats, looked perplexed at this grotesque contrast between the heroic speech (it had sounded heroic) and its anti-climax. Fortune took me by the arm as I edged my way close to him. “My dear fellow, it was unbelievable when those four old birds sang ‘Tipperary’ with bared heads. I had to stand at the salute while they sang three verses with tears in their eyes. They have been learning it during four years of war. Think of that! And think of what’s happening in Ireland--in Tipperary--now! There’s some paradox here which contains all the comedy and pathos of this war. I must think it out. I can’t quite get at it yet, but I feel it from afar.” “This is not a day for satire,” I said. “This is a day for sentiment. These people have escaped from frightful things----” Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome, mask-like face. “Et tu, Brute? After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our tearing down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly old war!” “I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It’s real, here. We have liberated all these people.” “We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the canal? We come in and get the kudos. Presently the Generals will come and say, ‘We did it. Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer us, good people, before we go to lunch.’ They will not see behind them the legions they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal stupidity, invincible pomposity.” Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his: “Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche.” He had composed it after a fourth whiskey on a cottage piano in his Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a General preparing a plan of battle--over the telephone. It never failed to make me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I thought, with the spirit about us. “Let’s put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day,” I said. Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, “Every inch a soldier--I don’t think!” III