“Captain, I have never been outside of America before. I have been looking over this little island of yours, and I want to tell you, right now, that I think it is worth fighting for!”
“Thanks awfully,” said Norton gravely, and offered an unexpected hand.
CHAPTER SIX
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE ISLANDERS
We are now at a rest-camp, recharging our batteries after the fatigues of sea travel before proceeding to the conquest of Germany.
The camp is situated deep in rural England. At our feet, in a valley, lies an ancient city, dominated by a mighty cathedral. It was once a walled city, but only the gates remain now—King’s Gate and West Gate. At the top of the High Street stands a great rough-hewn statue of Alfred the Great—dead for more than a thousand years. He makes a fine figure, with his coat of mail and uplifted broadsword. Mr. Eddie Gillette, among whose sterling virtues sentiment finds no place, compares him, not unfavourably, with a New York traffic cop. Mr. Joe McCarthy, still dyspeptic from the effects of prolonged ocean travel, describes the deceased monarch as a tough guy, and adds further that in his opinion this is a dead town. Al Thompson, of finer clay, inspects the statue approvingly, then passes on with a handful of interested spectators to the cathedral, whose grey walls keep eternal vigil over the dust of Saxon, Norman, and English dead—much of it ancestral American dust.
Elderly gentlemen in maroon dressing-gowns conduct the party round, and in piping tones introduce the New World to the Old. But not all Old. In one nook of the great fabric, guarded by Old Glory itself, gleaming brightly in the twilight, stands an Innovation—a temporary shrine dedicated to fallen American soldiers, particularly those who have died in English hospitals from wounds received in France. After the War the memorial is to take the form of a permanent stained-glass window. At present in England people are not manufacturing stained-glass windows—only earning them.
The countryside is full of camps—typically English—not spacious and bewildering such as those which scared the mountaineer from Tennessee, but prim and tidy, like an English kitchen-garden. The white conical tents are set out in close, level rows, like cabbages. The Headquarters tent and the Officers’ Mess are fenced in by a ring of curious boundary-stones, set a few feet apart and carefully whitewashed. The district is full of English soldiers. We have never seen them before, and we regard them with interest. We note with gratification that they are in the main smaller than ourselves and not so well set-up, though sturdy enough. Their teeth appear to require attention: gold teeth have not yet reached this country. They wear ragged mustaches, and smoke eternal cigarettes. The language that they speak is entirely incomprehensible.
Their officers, on the other hand, present a decidedly gay and frivolous appearance. They look very young; they wear their caps at a rakish angle; they carry canes. They are secretly regarded by many of us as verging upon the Clarence class. But the old stagers of our camp warn us not to form our judgments too hastily. When we are able to read the biography which every British soldier carries upon his sleeve or breast—scraps of ribbon, service chevrons, wound stripes, and the like—we will realize that things, especially in England, are not always what they seem.