The War dog has you now well beneath his paws. He joins the Mess and listens with an ill-concealed grin as each in turn boasts of the rat-catching powers of his dog at home. Then the War dog retreats hurriedly as a mouse appears; and you, his victim, apologise for him and explain how he has been shaken by adversity and what a noble creature a few days of good food and kind treatment will make of him. The rest is simple. The War dog (with his court) invades your bed and home parcels, and brings you into disrepute with all and sundry—especially the Cook and Quarter. He is fought and soundly thrashed by the regimental mascot (half his size), and the battalion wit composes limericks about you and your pet.
Then suddenly your War dog disappears. You are just beginning to live him down—having moved into another area—when you espy him from the street, the centre of a noisy group in a not too reputable wine-shop. But the War dog never recognises you. He has finished with you—grown tired of you, in fact (he rarely "works" the same victim for more than three weeks). You and your battalion are to him as it were a bone picked clean; and you depart with a prayer that he may die a stray's death at the hands of the Military Police.
One month travelling snugly in a G.S. waggon (you never catch him marching like an honest mascot), the next "swinging the lead" in some warm dug-out—there are few moves on the board of the great War game that he does not know. He will patronise a score of regiments in three months; travel from one end of the Western Front to the other and back again, taking care never to attempt to renew an old acquaintance. Occasionally he makes the mistake of running across a mitrailleuse battery with its dog-teams needing reinforcements, or tries to billet himself on a military pigeon-loft and meets a violent death. But whatever fortune may bring him we can confidently assert that he is much too fly to chance his luck across the border and into the land where the sausage-machines guard the secret of perpetual motion.
IN WILD WALES.
Dwarfing the town that to the hillside clings
On terraced slopes, the castle, nobly planned
And noble in its ruined greatness, flings
Its double challenge to the sea and land.
Oh, if the ancient spirit of the place