had done so well that
he was kept at it. His latest sonnet was to an abstract girl somewhere
in France which the Socialist, who was a man of critical judgment in
everything and of a rollicking disposition, praised very highly and read
aloud with the elocution of a Coquelin.

While others had as many as three and four gold stripes on their sleeves
to indicate the number of their wounds, the Socialist had been over the
parapet twenty-three times in charges without being hit, which he took
as a sure sign that his was the right kind of politics, the Royalist and
the Republican disagreeing and _mon capitaine_ saying that politics were
a mere matter of taste and being wounded a matter of luck. Thereupon,
the Socialist undertook a brief oration rich with humor, relieving it of
too much of the seriousness of the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies,
where he will probably thunder out his periods one of these days if he
contrives to keep on going over the parapet without being hit.

A man was what he was as a man and nothing more in that distinguished
company which had gained its distinction by extinguishing Germans.
Comradeship made all differences of opinion, birth and wealth only the
excuse for banter in this variation of type from the tall architect with
his charming manner to the matter-of-fact expert in diamonds and opals,
from the big private of colonial regulars who had won his shoulder
straps to the fellow with the blue blood of aristocratic France in his
veins. The architect I particularly remember, for he was killed in the
next charge, and the dealer in precious stones, for a shell-burst in the
face would never allow his eyes to see the flash of a diamond again.

But let youth eat, drink and be merry in the shadow of the fortunes of
war which might claim some of them to-morrow, making vacancies for
promotion of privates down in the camp. Where Cheeriness was the
handmaiden of _morale_ with the British, Monsieur Elan was with the
French. Everybody talked not only with his lips but with his hands and
shoulders, in that absence of self-consciousness which gives grace to
free expression. They spoke of their homes at one juncture with a sober
and lingering desire and a catch in the throat and they touched on the
problems after the war, which they would win or fight on forever,
concluding that the men from the trenches who would have the say would
make a new and better France and sweep aside any interference with the
march