The English soldier took it all as it came, with that queer adaptability of his to any environment or any adventure, with his simple human touch. “Better than the old Ypres salient,” said one of them, grinning at me after a game of Kiss-in-the-Ring at Verviers. He wiped the sweat from his face and neck, and as he raised his arm I saw by his gold stripes that he had been three times wounded. Yes, that was better than the old Hell. He roared with laughter when one of his comrades went into the ring with a buxom girl while the crowd danced round him, holding hands, singing, laughing, pulling him this side and that. The man who had just left the ring spoke to me again in a confidential way. “My wife wouldn’t like it if she’d seen me just then. I shan’t tell ’er. She wouldn’t understand. Nobody can understand the things we’ve done, the things we’ve thought, nor the things we’ve seen, unless they’ve been through with us ... and we don’t understand, neither!” “Who does?” I asked, to express agreement with him, but he took my words as a question to be answered. “P’raps Gord knows. If so ’E’s a Clever One,’E is!... I wish I ’ad ’alf ’Is sense.” He drifted away from me with a gurgle of laughter at a girl who pushed his cap on one side. Along the kerbstone of the market-place some transport-wagons were halted, and the drivers were cooking their evening meal over a charcoal stove, as though on one of the roads of war, while a crowd of Belgians roared with laughter at their by-play with clasp-knives, leaden spoons, and dixies. One of them was a cockney humourist--his type was always to be found in any group of English soldiers--and was performing a pantomime for the edification of the onlookers, and his own pleasure. A woman standing on the edge of this scene touched me on the sleeve. “Are you going forward to the Rhine, _mon lieutenant_?” I told her “yes,” and that I should soon be among the Germans. She gave a little tug to my sleeve, and spoke in a kind of coaxing whisper. “Be cruel to them, _mon lieutenant_! Be hard and ruthless. Make them suffer as we have suffered. Tread on their necks, so that they squeal. _Soyez cruel._” Her face and part of her figure were in the glow from the charcoal fire of the transport men, and I saw that she was a little woman, neatly dressed, with a thin, gentle, rather worn-looking face. Those words, “_Soyez cruel!_” gave me a moment’s shock, especially because of the soft, wheedling tone of her voice. “What would you do,” I asked in a laughing way, “if you were in my place?” “I dream at nights of what I would like to do. There are so many things I would like to do, for vengeance. I think all German women should be killed, to stop them breeding. That is one thing.” “And the next?” I asked. “It would be well to kill all German babies. Perhaps the good God will do it in His infinite wisdom.” “You are religious, madam?” “We had only our prayers,” she said, with piety.