"We don't want to belong to the Class that didn't fight."
And with it all they are so childlike and so simple—these heroes.
One afternoon, in a tea room near the Bon Marché, I noticed a soldier in an obscure corner, who, his back turned to us, was finishing with vigorous appetite, a plate of fancy cakes and pastry. (There was still pastry in those days—1917.)
"Good!" thought I. "I'm glad to see some one who loves cakes enjoying himself!"
The plate emptied, he waited a few minutes. Then presently he called the attendant.
She leaned over, listened to his whispered order, smiled and disappeared. A moment later she returned bearing a second well laden dish.
It was not long before these cakes too had gone the way of their predecessors.
I lingered a while anxious to see the face of this robust sweet tooth, whose appetite had so delighted me.
He poured out and swallowed a last cup of tea, paid his bill and rose, displaying as he turned about a pink and white beardless countenance, that might have belonged to a boy of fifteen—suddenly grown to a man during an attack of measles. On his breast was the Medaille Militaire, and the Croix de Guerre, with three palms.
This mere infant must have jumped from his school to an aeroplane. At any rate, I feel quite certain that he never before had been allowed out alone with sufficient funds to gratify his youthful passion for sweetmeats and, therefore, profiting by this first occasion, had indulged himself to the limit. Can you blame him?