THE WATCH DOGS.
XL.
My dear Charles,—The weather has changed and War has resumed a less uncomfortable aspect. The last I heard of our friend Persius Adolphus (now promoted to the giddy heights of Second-Lieutenant, but still referred to, in the privacy of the traverse, as "Perse") he was living al fresco in his little bit of trench, leading the sinful life with a pot of páté de foie gras in the one hand and the latest number of La Vie Parisienne in the other. It takes a lot of H.E. to distract a man's attention from these luxuries, which goes to show that, if at times it is a short life, it is in spring a merry one, and a twenty-franc note will in these parts provide a man with all the most extravagant pleasures of the idle rich for a month.
To the officer in the trench, Battalion Headquarters, a few hundred yards to the rear, is a veritable pleasaunce far removed from the din and worry of battle. To the C.O. and his satellites, putting up with their dangers and discomforts for a noble cause, Brigade Headquarters, a mile down the road, is a palace of safety and ease, where any man but a fool of a Brigadier would remain. To the Brigade Staff, grimly holding on in its rough and perilous fortress, the Divisional villa is the ideal of quiet residences. To the Divisional Staff, suffering silently, the Corps Château is all that a man could ask in the way of handsome furnished apartments. And to the Corps Staff it is ever a matter of surprise that its miserable hovel can be contemplated without a blush by the Army Staff, revelling, as the latter does, in every modern convenience. The Army Staff says nothing but thinks bitterly of those at G.H.Q., and by the time it gets to the War Office I couldn't tell you what the grouse is or whose the envied lot. The real wallower out here is, if we all did but know it, some little known and unobtrusive C.O. of some special company, with a village to himself, half-a-dozen châteaux to choose from, more motors than he knows what to do with, and, wickedest and worst, a real bath to wash in.
Be that as it may, the eyes of all rest upon the same unwarlike pictures torn from the same least bellicose journal. From dug-out to palace, faded walls are decorated with the same three-colour process divinities, whose expressions are as arch as arch and whose clothing is typical of the wonderful economy of the French. Through the clamour of bursting shells or the din of the military typewriter, turning out its thousand "Pass Memos." to the hour, these fair Parisiennes continue to smile unperturbed, until some officer, callous rather than modest, hides their bright blue eyes and bright red cheeks under a pile of official telegrams relating to picks and shovels, gas protectors and other sordid and unromantic matter.
Meanwhile the motor lorries creep demurely along the country lanes, coming nobody knows whence, going nobody knows whither. Now and then they will pause in a convenient ditch, rubbing their wheels briskly in the mud to restore the circulation. A less restful sight is the military car, proceeding at a pace never exceeding twenty kilometres per hour, the occupants of which have also, these days, adopted the three-colour process, a sure sign that we are winning. Fortune favours the brave, and the lightning despatch-rider as often as not will pass through the lot, with the loss of little more than a couple of limbs and half-a-dozen spare parts. Even so, he will not omit to salute you, as you stand off the road, a sight which has a peculiar thrill of its own, since the salute of a motor cyclist consists in his looking fixedly in one direction and proceeding recklessly in another. You cannot help appreciating his courtesy, but in your more nervous moments you can't help wishing he wouldn't do it.
By way of contrast to the business of it all is the light-blue Gendarme, unaffected by the entourage of war, ambling peacefully where he will, greeting all and sundry with an expansive smile and growing momentarily ruddier and more fat in his happy face. It is his work in life to get in nobody's way and do no man any harm; it is his pleasure to wear upon his head a helmet of the truest steel, of a type created to ward off hostile shrapnel, but worn by him for the same good reason for which a miller wears a white hat. I count amongst the best of my newly-found friends a certain chef of this merry and bright escadron. An ex-Cavalry Officer, he fought through the earlier stages of the War, undaunted by many misadventures. Since he took to the less hazardous pastime of commanding gendarmerie, he has found life not so precarious, may be, but a good deal more intricate.
He will tell you, if you ask him, the story of the sacred civilian automobile which he once ventured to stop in order to satisfy himself as to its contents. He did not recognise any significant halo surrounding it, though this should have been discernible even in the cloud of dust accompanying it. He had his written instructions to see that the credentials of all who drove through his zone should be en règle. Simple and ingenuous as he then was, written instructions were enough for him. The car approached him menacingly, but he stood his horse in the middle of the road and signed to it to stop. The car hooted with hoarse and defiant anger, and a sinister bowler hat was seen and angry words were heard at the window. None the less he stopped it at the risk of his life, and in his best manner (always a nice one) demanded credentials.
In wartime, one may interfere with Jupiter and be forgiven, but my Commandant had gone too far. He was lucky to find himself, at the conclusion of the correspondence, severely admonished and in receipt of an order to place himself under arrest for six days (which he did, choosing six wet ones).
The car contained a Deputy, no less.
The Commandant clings to the childlike belief that we manage these things better in England. What would have happened, he asked me, if he had been a British officer and the object of his attention merely a Member of Parliament? "Merely," indeed! I answered that the thing simply couldn't be conceived as happening with us. Our soldiers, I admitted, were amongst the bravest of the brave, but I had never yet met one reckless enough to dream of obstructing the slightest whim of a politician.
Meanwhile, Charles, don't forget to forward to me, day by day, the Official Communiqué from the Irish Front.
Yours ever,
Henry.
LEST WE FORGET.
"Combed-out" Gentleman (to pal, also about to be called up). "What about 'avin' our photos took? We shall be in khaki to-morrow, and I Should Like To Feel I 'ad some record of what I've looked like."