Belgium, there was silence. Such ideas as the Subaltern himself had on
the strategical situation were but crude. The line of battle, he
fancied, would stretch north and south, from Mülhouse to Liège. If it
were true that Liège had fallen, he thought the left would rest
successfully on Namur. The English Army, he imagined, was acting as
"general reserve," behind the French line, and would not be employed
until the time had arrived to hurl the last reserve into the mêlée, at
the most critical point.

And all the while, never a sound of firing, never a sight of the red and
blue of the French uniforms. The war might have been two hundred miles
away!

Meanwhile Tommy on his marches was discovering things. Wonder of
wonders, this curious people called "baccy" tabac! "And if yer wants a
bit of bread yer awsks for pain, strewth!" He loved to hear the French
gabble to him in their excited way; he never thought that reciprocally
his talk was just as funny. The French matches earned unprintable names.
But on the whole he admired sunny France with its squares of golden corn
and vegetables, and when he passed a painted Crucifix with its cluster
of flowering graves, he would say: "Golly, Bill, ain't it pretty? We
oughter 'ave them at 'ome, yer know." And of course he kept on saying
what he was going to do with "Kayser Bill."

One night after the evening meal, the men of the Company gave a little
concert outside the mill. The flower-scented twilight was fragrantly
beautiful, and the mill stream gurgled a lullaby accompaniment as it
swept past the trailing grass. Nor was there any lack of talent. One
reservist, a miner since he had left the army, roared out several songs
concerning the feminine element at the sea-side, or voicing an inquiry