Then I asked if they had ever had any doubt that they would reach the Rhine.
“How could we, sir?”
“And how about the Germans. Do you hate them?”
“Hate!” exclaimed the big man. “What good would it do to hate them? No, we don’t hate. We get our blood up when we’re fighting and when they don’t play the game. But hate! Don’t you think that’s kind of ridiculous, sir?”
“How do they fight?”
“They take a bit of beating, do the Boches!”
“So you call them Boches!”
“Yes. They don’t like that. But sometimes we call them Allemands, which is Germans in French. Oh, we’re getting quite French scholars!”
“They’re good soldiers. Not many tricks they’re not up to. But in my opinion they’re overdoing the hate. You can’t keep up to your work on hate, sir. I should think it would be weakening to the mind, too.”
“Still, you would like the war over? You’d like to go home?”