"You 'aven't any room ... you'd kick the ball over the side into the sea." The Englishmen grinned.
"Wot do they wear—clothes or just a belt?"
"Don't s'pose they eat each other?"
"Wonder if any of 'em's black?"
"Wot do they live in—wigwams or caves?"
Stumpy, conscious of somehow saying the wrong thing and hurt by the shower of friendly sarcasm, shrugged his shoulders.
"Orl right," he said, "take the bloomin' advantage of the tiny isle—any'ow we 'ad the guts to come out yere."
"That's right, kid," someone offered him a fag, "you were a democracy, a free country, long before England was ENGLAND at all, before the British Empire was dreamed of. You were the first elements of that Empire...."
"'Ere," said Stumpy, grinning with delight, "'ave a bloomin' drink."
"Your Battalion saved a whole Division at Cambrai—."