rseillaise. Yorkshire had learnt the hymn of France,
her song of victory, and I heard it on the lips of Highlanders and
Welshmen, who came tramping through the British base to the
camps outside the town where they waited to be sent forward to the
fighting line.

"Vive les Anglais!" cried a French girl, in answer to the whistling
courtesy. Then she laughed, with her arm round the waist of a girl
friend, and said, "They are all the same, these English soldiers. In
their khaki one cannot tell one from the other, and now that I have
seen so many thousands of them--Heaven! hundreds of thousands!
--I have exhausted my first enthusiasm. It is sad: the new arrivals
do not get the same welcome from us."

That was true. So many of our soldiers had been through the British
base that they were no longer a novelty. The French flower-girls did
not empty their stalls into the arms of the regiments, as on the first
days.

It was an English voice that gave the new-comers the highest praise,
because professional.

"A hefty lot! ... Wish I were leading them." The praise and the wish
came from a young English officer who was staying in the same hotel
with me. For two days I had watched his desperate efforts to avoid
death by boredom. He read every line of the Matin and Journal
before luncheon, with tragic sighs, because every line repeated what
had been said in the French newspapers since the early days of the
war. After luncheon he made a sortie for the English newspapers,
which arrived by boats. They kept him quiet until tea-time. After that
he searched the cafes for any fellow officers who might be there.

"This is the most awful place in the world!" he repeated at intervals,
even to the hall porter, who agreed with him. When I asked him how
long he had been at the base he groaned miserably and confessed to
three weeks of purgatory.

"I've been put into the wrong pigeon-hole at the War Office," he said.
"I'm lost."

There were many other men at the British base who seemed to have
been put into the wrong pigeon-holes. Among them were about two
hundred French interpreters who were awaiting orders to proceed
with a certain division. But they were not so restless as my friend in
the hotel. Was it not enough for them that they had been put into
English khaki--supplied from the store-cupboard--and that every
morning they had to practise the art of putting on a puttee? In order to
be perfectly English they also practised the art of s