The Colonel produced a frayed field-despatch from the breast pocket of his tunic, and read:
I desire to take the opportunity of tendering to you, as their immediate commander, my earnest thanks for the assistance and service of the four companies of Infantry who participated in yesterday’s brilliant operations. The dash, gallantry, and efficiency of these American troops left nothing to be desired, and my Australian soldiers speak in the very highest terms in praise of them.
“There is some more,” added the Colonel, “but that will be sufficient to show you what that General thought of my boys. The Australians have a pretty high standard of their own, and they don’t pin orchids on other people unnecessarily. So we appreciated this.” He tapped the despatch. “The fact is, we were a band of brothers. The only occasion upon which we indulged in anything like ceremony or company manners was on the Fourteenth of July. (Corresponds to our Fourth.) I went along with a few others to represent the Americans at a swell lunch which was to be given in the Town Hall of Amiens in honor of the occasion. Amiens was under shell-fire at the time—right in view of the enemy, who were up on the high ground back of Villers Brettoneux, not ten miles away. But no one worried. We had our lunch in a cellar—French, British, Australian, and American officers. Some lunch! There were flowers on the table, too. Flowers! God knows where they came from. But that’s France—just France! They had to have them! Speeches, too, by Senators from Paris. Speeches, with German shells bursting in the street outside! They’re a great nation!”
“How did the British Tommy and the Doughboy get along?” inquired Floyd.
Colonel Graham’s frosty eyes twinkled.
“Each took a little while,” he said, “to get the combination of the other. You see, Major, we Americans consider ourselves the greatest nation on earth; and being Americans, we have to say so. Perhaps you have noticed that?”
“I have,” assented Floyd, “and I have lived in America long enough to learn to like hearing you say so. I like the young American’s passionate affection for his country and all her institutions, and his fixed determination to boost everything connected with her. The other day I was waiting in a village for an American Staff car which was being sent for me from Chaumont. I found one standing at the corner of the street, so I asked the chauffeur, thinking he might be from headquarters,—‘Where are you from?’ And he sat up, and replied, all in one breath, as if I had pressed a button,—‘Sir, I am from Marion, Ohio, the Greatest Steam-Shovel Producing Centre in the World!’—Just like that. That is what I call the right spirit. But I am interrupting you, Colonel.”
“You British, on the other hand,” resumed the Colonel, “also consider yourselves the greatest nation upon earth, but you do not say so to people, because you take it for granted that they know already!”
“A palpable hit, sir!” conceded Floyd, amid laughter.
“Well,” continued the Colonel, “those two points of view required quite a little adjustment, in the first place. Then again, there was a certain amount of ‘We-have-come-to-win-this-War-for you’ stuff from our boys, and a certain amount of ‘You-have-been-a-darned-long-while-making-up your-minds-about-it’ stuff from yours; and all these little corners had to be rounded off. On top of that there was a lot of very insidious, very clever work by German agencies, to make trouble between them. But you know about that. Then, they suffered from the handicap of a common language. Believe me, it’s a darned sight easier to keep on clubby terms with an ally whose language you don’t know than an ally whose language you do! But they are wise to one another now. Each has learned to respect and tolerate the other’s point of view. Of course they don’t understand one another; and never will. In that respect they are three thousand miles and several centuries apart. So they tacitly agreed to regard one another as crazy, but likeable—and leave it at that. In my view that is about as far as Anglo-American sentiment will ever get; and I shall be glad and satisfied if we here, who know, can maintain it at that standard—and it’s a higher standard than would appear at first sight. But I am talking too much. Where was I?”