"How do you like it?"
"We are not yet masters of the language, we find," said the schoolmaster, "though I had a pretty good book knowledge of it."
"I'm learning the gestures fast, though," said the architect.
"The French are glad to see us," said the schoolmaster. "They call us the Keetcheenaires. I fancy they thought we were a long time coming. But now we are here, I think they will find that we can keep up our end."
They had the fresh complexions which come from healthy, outdoor work. There was something engaging in their boyishness and their views. For they had a wider range of interests than that professional soldier, Mr. Atkins, these citizens who had taken up arms. They knew what trench-fighting meant by work in practice trenches at home.
"Of course it will not be quite the same; theory and practice never are," said the schoolmaster.
"We ought to be well grounded in the principles," said the architect thoughtfully, "and they say that in a week or two of actual experience you will have mastered the details that could not be taught in England. Then, too, having shells burst around you will be strange at first. But I think our battalion will give a good account of itself, sir. All the Bucks men have!" There crept in the pride of regiment, of locality, which is so characteristically Anglo-Saxon.
They change life at the front, these new army men. If a carpenter, a lawyer, a sign-painter, an accountant, is wanted, you have only to speak to a new army battalion commander and one is forthcoming—a millionaire, too, for that matter, who gets his shilling a day for serving his country. Their intelligence permitted the architect and the schoolmaster to have no illusions about the character of the war they had to face. The pity was that such a fine force as the new army, which had not become trench stale, could not have a free space in which to make a great turning movement, instead of having to go against that solid battle front from Switzerland to the North Sea.
We have heard enough—quite enough for most of us?—about the German Crown Prince. But there is also a prince with the British army in France. No lieutenant looks younger for his years than this one in the Grenadier Guards, and he seems of the same type as the others when you see him marching with his regiment or off for a walk smoking a brier-wood pipe. There are some officers who would rather not accompany him on his walks, for he can go fast and far. He makes regular reports of his observations, and he has opportunities for learning which other subalterns lack, for he may have both the staff and the army as personal instructors. Otherwise, his life is that of any other subaltern; for there is an instrument called the British Constitution which regulates many things. A little shy, very desirous to learn, is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and the Empire of India. He might be called the willing prince.
This was one of the shells that hit—one of the hundred that hit. The time was summer; the place, the La Bassée region. Probably the fighting was all the harder here because it is so largely blind. When you cannot see what an enemy is doing you keep on pumping shells into the area which he occupies; you take no risks with him.