and hourly
occurrence.

Tommy is sick of the war--dead sick of it. He is weary of the
interminable procession of comfortless nights and days. He is weary of
the sight of maimed and bleeding men--of the awful suspense of waiting
for death. In the words of his pathetic little song, he does "want to go
'ome." But there is that within him which says, "Hold on!" He is a
compound of cheery optimism and grim tenacity which makes him an
incomparable fighting man.

The intimate picture of him which lingers most willingly in my mind is
that which I carried with me from the trenches on the dreary November
evening shortly before I bade him good-bye. It had been raining and
sleeting for a week. The trenches were knee-deep in water, in some places
waist-deep, for the ground was as level as a floor and there was no
possibility of drainage. We were wet through and our legs were numb with
the cold. Near our gun position there was a hole in the floor of the
trench where the water had collected in a deep pool. A bridge of boards
had been built around one side of this, but in the darkness a passer-by
slipped and fell into the icy water nearly up to his arm-pits.

"Now, then, matey!" said an exasperating voice, "bathin' in our private
pool without a permit?"

And another, "'Ere, son! This ain't a swimmin' bawth! That's our tea
water yer a-standin' in!"

The Tommy in the pool must have been nearly frozen, but for a moment he
made no attempt to get out.

"One o' you fetch me a bit o' soap, will you?'" he said coaxingly. "You
ain't a-go'n' to talk about tea water to a bloke wot ain't 'ad a bawth in
seven weeks?"

It is men of this stamp who have the fortunes of England in their
keeping. And they are called, "The Boys of the Bulldog Breed."

THE END

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

BOOKS ON THE GREAT WAR

_Published by_

Houghton Mifflin Company

Thrilling stories of real adventure; graphic pictures of the fighting by
men who actually fought; notable volumes dealing with the larger aspects
of the struggle; in short, books for every taste and on every phase of
the war may be found in these pages.

_Personal Narratives_

A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION
E. MORLAE