"Every grocer in France," he cried, "can get a license to sell wine. He sends a small boy—un vrai gosse—to the Bureau, he stamps a certificate, he pays a few francs, and that is all. A soldier can fill his bottle at any grocer's in the town. Why," he went on, the original cause of our interview forgotten and the delinquent turned confidante, "not long ago I entrained a regiment here sober, Mademoiselle, I assure you sober, but when they arrived at R—— they were drunk. And the General was furious. 'What do you mean by sending me drunken soldiers?' he thundered. They had filled their bottles, they were thirsty in the train...."
But officially, you understand, soldiers of France are never drunk. Actually they seldom are. Coming home after six months in Bar, I saw more soldiers under the influence of drink in a week (it included a journey to Ireland in a train full of ultra-cheerful souls) than in all my time in France. That men who were far from sober came occasionally to the canteen cannot be denied, there are rapscallions in every army, but the percentage was small, and with twenty-two degrees of frost gnawing his vitals there is excuse for the man who solaces himself with wine.
V
It was characteristic of the French mind that Colonel X. could not understand why we did not call the station guard and turn the rioters into the street. To wander about in that bitter wind, to get perhaps into all sorts of trouble! Better a rowdy canteen a hundred times over.
We were frank enough—at least I know I was—on that aspect of the episode, and, all honour to him, he conceded a point though he failed to understand its necessity. But now, as at so many pulsating moments of my career, the ill-luck that dogs me seized me in the person of the Canteen-Chief and removed me from the room. She, poor ignorant dear, thought I was being indiscreet, whereas I was merely being receptive. I am sure I owe that Canteen-Chief a grudge, and I HOPE the Colonel thinks he does, but on that point his discretion has been perfect.
Only in the very direst extremity would we have called in the station guard. We knew the deep-seated animosity with which the soldier views the gendarme. I may be wrong, but my firm impression is that he hates him even more than, or quite as much, as he hates the Boche. I suppose because he does not fight. There must be something intensely irritating to a war-scarred soldier in the sight of a strapping, well-fed, comfortable policeman. You know the story of the wounded Tommy making his way back from the lines and being accosted by a red-cap?
"'Some' fight, eh?" he inquired blandly.
"Some don't," retorted Tommy, and that sums the situation up more neatly than a volume of explanation.
Once, after the Walpurgis Night, a man chose to be noisy and slightly offensive in the canteen. It was a thing that rarely happened, and could always be dealt with, but, smarting possibly under a reprimand, the guard rushed in, seized a quiet, inoffensive, rather elderly man who was meekly drinking his coffee, and in spite of remonstrances and protestations in which the canteen-workers joined, dragged him off, cutting his throat rather badly with a bayonet in the scuffle. A little incident which in no way inclined us to lean for support, moral or otherwise, upon the guardians of military law. But we gave them their coffee or chocolate piping hot just the same.
And there were weeks when hot drinks were more acceptable than would have been promise of salvation.