Make a fuss of the kiddies and you have won the mothers! And if you have won the mothers and women of France you have conquered "la belle France" herself. And les anglais conquered France in those few days at the French ports. The happiest of victories, and one which augured well for the future.
Nothing pleased the French more than British courtesy and gentleness to women and children; and their kindness to and care of their horses. British love of personal cleanliness, and the unfailing cheeriness of the men, these have, of course, long since become proverbial. But then it was all new to France, almost to the world, and so one records these things as first impressions.
And the Scotties. Everyone knows how the lads from north of the Tweed made sad havoc among French hearts. Have they not always done so since Frenchmen and Scotsmen first clasped hands in alliance?
If a Scotsman was asked once a day whether he wore anything under his kilt he was asked a hundred times. And truth compels me to add that it was generally the ladies who put the question. What the answer was I never found out. I imagine that our lads were not sorry to hide their blushes in the troop trains which carried them forward to the frontier.
But all these little details have been so admirably recorded by Philip Gibbs in his masterly book, "The Soul of the War," that there is really not much more to tell. I shall have still a little to add in the next chapter, when it comes to trekking up country.
I had some little cause on the first day of landing to regret the exuberance of French hospitality. Half my men, they were mostly Special Reservists, suddenly disappeared into the unknown directly they set foot on shore. And they hadn't a week's pay in their pockets either.
Eventually I got them rounded up and next morning there were twenty-five prisoners, "caps off," for "office." To say they were surprised is to give a very poor indication of their feelings when they found varying degrees of punishment awarded to them.
But this was nothing to the ludicrous expressions of the men when all the remainder were paraded and informed what they had to expect on active service. It ran somewhat as follows:
"When a sentry, sleeping upon his post."
Punishment—DEATH.
"Leaving his C.O. to go in search of
plunder." Punishment—DEATH.
"Forcing a safeguard."—DEATH.
"Quitting his guard without leave."—DEATH.
"Disobeying the lawful command of his
superior officer."—DEATH.
And so on, the lightest punishment being about fourteen years' Rigorous Imprisonment.