the French
as deeply as they came to do now. Hitherto dealings in the language had
been entirely with the women in the villages and billets of the reserve
lines, where there was plenty of time to find means of expressing the
two things that for the most part were all they had to express--their
wants and their thanks. And because by now they had no slightest
difficulty in making these billet inhabitants understand what they
required--a fire for cooking, stretching space on a floor, the location
of the nearest estaminets, whether eggs, butter, and bread were
obtainable, and how much was the price--they had fondly imagined in
their hearts, and boasted loudly in their home letters, that they were
quite satisfactorily conversant with the French language. Now they were
to discover that their knowledge was not quite so extensive as they had
imagined, although it never occurred to them that the French women in
the billets were learning English a great deal more rapidly and
efficiently than they were learning French, that it was not altogether
their mastery of the language which instantly produced soap and water,
for instance, when they made motions of washing their hands and said
slowly and loudly: "Soap--you compree, soap and l'eau; you
savvy--l'eau, wa-ter." But now, when it came to the technicalities of
their professional business, they found their command of the language
completely inadequate. There were many of them who could ask, "What is
the time?" but that helped them little to discover at what time the
Germans made a practice of shelling the trenches; they could have asked
with ease, "Have you any eggs?" but they could not twist this into a
sentence to ask whether there were any egg-selling farms in the
vicinity; could have asked "how much" was the bread, but not how many
yards it was to the German trench.

A few Frenchmen, who spoke more or less English, found themselves in
enormous French and English demand, while Private 'Enery Irving, who
had hitherto borne some reputation as a French speaker--a reputation,
it may be mentioned, largely due to his artful knack of helping out
spoken words by imitation and explanatory acting--found his bubble
reputation suddenly and disastrously pricked. He made some attempt to
clutch at its remains by listening to the remarks addressed to him by a
Frenchman, with a most potently intelligent and understanding
expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly understanding
"Ah