n March, 1915, remember.)

"How can they when they ain't over the Balkans yet?"

"The Carpathians, you mean."

"Well, they're both mountains and the Russians have got to cross
them. And there's a place called Cracow in that region. What's the
matter of a pair of mountain ranges between you and me, Bill? You're
strong on geography, but you fail to follow the campaign."

"The Rhine, I say!"

"It's the Rhine first, but Berlin is what you want to keep your mind on."

Then I asked if they had ever had any doubt that they would reach
the Rhine.

"How could we, sir?"

"And how about the Germans. Do you hate them?"

"Hate!" exclaimed the big man. "What good would it do to hate them?
No, we don't hate. We get our blood up when we're fighting and when
they don't play the game. But hate! Don't you think that's kind of
ridiculous, sir?"

"How do they fight?"

"They take a bit of beating, do the Boches!"

"So you call them Boches!"

"Yes. They don't like that. But sometimes we call them Allemands,
which is Germans in French. Oh, we're getting quite French
scholars!"

"They're good soldiers. Not many tricks they're not up to. But in my
opinion they're overdoing the hate. You can't keep up to your work on
hate, sir. I should think it would be weakening to the mind, too."

"Still, you would like the war over? You'd like to go home?"

They certainly would. Back to the barracks, out of the trenches! They
certainly would.

"And call it a draw?"

"Call it a draw, now! Call it a draw, after all we've been through------"

"Spring is coming. The ground will dry up and it will be warm."

"And the going will be good to Berlin, as it was back from Paris in
August, we tell the Boches."

"Good for the Russians going over the Carpathians, or the Pyrenees,
or whatever those mountains are, too. I read they're all covered with
snow in winter."

It was good, regular soldier talk, very "homey" to me. As you will
observe, I have not elided the h's. Indeed, Tommy has a way of
prefixing his h's to the right vowels more frequently than a generation
ago. The Soldiers Three type has passed. Popular education will
have its way and induce better habits. Believing in the old remedy for
exhaustion and exposure to cold, the army served out a tot of rum
every day to the men. But many of them are teetotalers, these hardy
regulars, and not even Mulvaney will think them effeminate when they
have seen fighting which makes anything Mulvaney