ould get you to listen to him long
enough he'd make you believe that after we got on the job the French and
English merely hung around the back areas with their mouths open and
watched us wind things up.

"You see," he'd explain, "it was our superior discipline and our
wonderful morale that did it. Look at our marines. Just average material
to start with. But what training! Same way with a lot of our infantry
regiments. They'd been taught that orders were orders. It had been
hammered into 'em. They knew that when they were told to do a thing it
just had to be done, and that was all there was to it. We didn't wait
until we got over there to win the war. We won it here, on our
cantonment drill grounds. And I rather think, if you'll pardon my saying
so, that I did my share."

"I'm glad you admit it, Hartley," says I. "I was afraid you wouldn't."

His latest bug though was this Veteran Reserve Army scheme of his. His
idea was that instead of scrappin' this big army organization that it
had cost so much to build up we ought to save it so it would be ready in
case another country--Japan maybe--started anything. He thought every
man should keep his uniform and equipment and be put on call. They ought
to keep up their training, too. Might need some revisin' of regiments
and so on, but by having the privates report, say once a week, at the
nearest place where officers could meet them, it could be done. Course,
some of the officers might be too busy to bother with it. Well, they
could resign. That would give a chance for promotions. And the gaps in
the enlisted ranks could be kept filled from the new classes which
universal service would account for.

See Hartley's little plan? He could go on wearin' his shoulder straps
and shiny leggins and maybe in time he'd have a gold or silver poison
ivy leaf instead of the bar.

It was the details of this scheme that he'd been tryin' to work off on
me for weeks, but I'd kept duckin', until finally I'd agreed to let him
spill it across the luncheon table.

"It's got to be a swell feed, though, Hartley," I insists as I joins him
out at the express elevator.

"Will the Cafe l'Europe do?" he asks.

"Gee!" says I. "So that's why you 're dolled up in the Sunday uniform,
eh? Got the belt on too. All right. But I mean to wade right through
from hors-d'oeuvres to parfait. Hope you've cashed in your delayed pay
vouchers."

I notice, too, that Hartley don't hunt out any secluded nook down i