“Pour les bebes!” they cried.
“While there's life there's hope,” said one of the Australians, with sardonic humor.
So the martyrdom of Amiens was at an end, and life came back to the city that had been dead, and the soul of the city had survived. I have not seen it since then, but one day I hope I shall go back and shake hands with Gaston the waiter and say, “Comment ca va, mon vieux?” (“How goes it, my old one?”) and stroll into the bookshop and say, “Bon jour, mademoiselle!” and walk round the cathedral and see its beauty in moonlight again when no one will look up and say, “Curse the moon!”
There will be many ghosts in the city at night—the ghosts of British officers and men who thronged those streets in the great war and have now passed on.
PART SIX. PSYCHOLOGY ON THE SOMME
I
All that had gone before was but a preparation for what now was to come. Until July 1 of 1916 the British armies were only getting ready for the big battles which were being planned for them by something greater than generalship—by the fate which decides the doom of men.
The first battles by the Old Contemptibles, down from Mons and up by Ypres, were defensive actions of rear—guards holding the enemy back by a thin wall of living flesh, while behind the New Armies of our race were being raised.