It was an island within an island that night, there under the Ruhleben
grand stand--English speech and Irish wit in that German sea. You
should have seen the two young patricians drifting in, with the
regulation drawl of the Piccadilly "nut"--"I say! He-ah's some
Christians--let's chaff them!" The crowd was laughing, the commandant
was laughing, the curtain closed in a whirl of applause, one had
forgotten there was a war. The applause continued, the players straggled
out, faltering back from the parts in which they had forgotten
themselves into normal, self-conscious Englishmen. There was a moment's
embarrassed pause, then the rattle of a sabre as the tall man in
gray-blue rose to his feet.

"Danke Ihnen, meine Herren! Aeusserst nett!" he said briskly. ("Thanks,
gentlemen! Very clever indeed!") He turned to us, nodded in stiff
soldierly fashion. "Sehr nett! Sehr nett!" he said, and led the way out
between a lane of Englishmen suddenly become prisoners again.




Chapter VIII

In The German Trenches At La Bassée



We had come down from Berlin on-one of those excursions which the German
General Staff arranges for the military observers and correspondents of
neutral countries. You go out, a sort of zoo--our party included four
or five Americans, a Greek, an Italian, a diminutive Spaniard, and a