“Joachim can tell you all right when he comes on leave!” she exclaimed triumphantly as she went out of the door.
The Central Powers were winning again.
“Yes, and we’ve lots more hand grenades and things than you all!” gloated Auntie.
“How many hand grenades?” I asked again statistically.
“Oh, hundreds of them!” she replied.
“Just how many soldiers have the Germans got?” I inquired a few minutes later.
It was Erna who volunteered to reply.
“I know exactly. My brother told me and he’s an Unteroffizier! We’ve six thousand and the English only three thousand! Twice as many! Why, he saw two hundred soldiers in one town!”
This quite put the cap on it. It put an end, anyway, to any serious discussion of the matter on my part. But talk I must, and not wishing to see the name of England writhing in the dust, I tried to adopt myself to the peasant style of argument. About a month thereafter you might have found me entertaining my German companions in the fields in this wise:
“Ha, Ha! We laugh at the Germans in London! We spit on them—the monkeys! You’re fine Kerls—you black bread eaters, you cherry-leaf smokers, you wooden-shoed pigs! Wouldn’t you look fine on the Paris boulevard in those? Was? Ach, we spit on the Germans! Passe mal auf, die Engländer are coming, and they shoot—So—and the Germans will run—So—Ja, you’re schön dumm, you are!”