must sing it. I thought I had heard "Tipperary" before several
times, and that it was a march. I found I had not heard it before, and
that it is not a march, but a lament and a love-song. The soldier did
not know we were listening, and while his fingers wove the meshes of the
net, his voice rose in tones of the most moving sweetness. He did not
know that he was facing a window, he did not know that he was staring
straight out upon the city of London. But we knew, and when in his rare
barytone and rare brogue he whispered rather than sang the lines:

"Good-by, Piccadilly--
Farewell, Leicester Square,
It's a long, long way to Tipperary"

--all of his unseen audience hastily fled.

There was also Private Watts, who was mending shoes. When the week
before Lord Kitchener visited St. Dunstan's, Watts had joked with him. I
congratulated him on his courage.

"What was your joke?" I inquired.

"He asked me when I was a prisoner with the Germans how they fed me, and
I said: 'Oh, they gave me five beefsteaks a day.'"

"That was a good joke," I said. "Did Kitchener think so?"

The man had been laughing, pleased and proud. Now the blank eyes turned
wistfully to my companion.

"Did his lordship smile?" he asked.

Those blind French officers at the Crillon in Paris and these English
Tommies are teaching a great lesson. They are teaching men who are
whining over the loss of money, health, or a job, to be ashamed. It is
not we who are helping them, but they who are helping us. They are
showing us how to face disaster and setting an example of real courage.
Those who do not profit by it are more blind than they.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Minor changes have been made to correct obvious typesetters' errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
words and intent.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of With the French in France and Salonika, by
Richard Harding Davis

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