"Rheumatism!" said the Frenchman. The Algerian pressed his palms
together six times, then held up two fingers. "He's sixty-two years
old!" said the Frenchman, and the old warrior obligingly opened his jaws
and pointed to two or three lone brown fangs to prove it. They talked
for a moment in the vernacular, and the Frenchman explained again,
"Volunteer!" and then, "Scout!"

The old Arab made the motion of sighting along a rifle, then of brushing
something over, and tapped himself on the chest.

"Deux!" he said. "Two Germans--me!" Evidently he was going back to the
desert satisfied.

Train after train passed us, northward bound, some from Boulogne, some
from the trenches north of Paris evidently, bringing artillery caked
with mud--all packed with British soldiers leaning from doors of their
cattle-cars, hats pushed back, pipes in their faces, singing and joking.
At the end of each train, in passenger-coaches, their officers--tall,
slim-legged young Olympians in leather puttees and short tan greatcoats,
with their air of elegant amateurs embarking on some rather superior
sort of sport.

The same cars filled with French soldiers equally brave, efficient,
light-hearted would be as different as Corneille and Shakespeare, as
Dickens and Dumas--and in the same ways!

An Englishman had been telling me in a London club a few nights before
of the "extraordinary detachment" of Tommy Atkins.

"Take almost any of those little French soldiers--they've got a pretty