And when those Newfoundlanders start to yell, start to yell,
Oh, Kaiser Bill, you'll wish you were in hell, were in hell;
For they'll hang you high to your Potsdam palace wall,
You're a damn poor Kaiser, after all.
The singing died down slowly. The talk turned to the trenches and the chances of victory, and by degrees to personal impressions.
"I'd like to know," said one chap, "why we all enlisted."
"When I enlisted," said a man with an accent reminiscent of the Placentia Bay, "I thought there'd be lots of fun, but with weather like this, and nothing fit to eat, there's not much poetry or romance in war any more."
"Right for you, my son," said another; "your King and Country need you, but the trouble is to make your King and Country feed you."
"Don't you wish you were in London now, Gal?" said one chap, turning to me. "You'd have a nice bed to sleep in, and could eat anywhere you liked."
"Well," I said, "enough people tried to persuade me to stop. One fellow told me that the more brains a man had, the farther away he was from the firing-line. He'd been to the front too. I think," I added, "that General Sherman had the right idea."
"I wish you fellows would shut up and go to sleep," said a querulous voice from a nearby dugout.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Gal; General Sherman was an optimist."
"It doesn't do any good to talk about it now," said Art Pratt, in a matter of fact voice. "Some of you enlisted so full of love of country that there was patriotism running down your chin, and some of you enlisted because you were disappointed in love, but the most of you enlisted for love of adventure, and you're getting it."