permissionnaire. When the combats that gave the Bois-le-Prêtre its
sinister nickname began to peter out, the poilus who had done the
fighting were accorded these little vacations, and almost every
afternoon the straggling groups of joyous permissionnaires were seen on
the road between the trenches and the station. The expression on the
faces was never that of having been rescued from a living hell; it
expressed joy and prospect of a good time rather than deliverance.

When I got my permission, a comrade took me to the station at a certain
rail-head where a special train started for Paris, and by paying extra I
was allowed to travel second class. I shall not dwell on the journey
because I did not meet a single human being worth recording during the
trip. At eight at night I arrived in Paris. So varied had been my
experiences at the front that had I stepped out into a dark and deserted
city I should not have been surprised. The poilu, when he sees the city
lights again, almost feels like saying, "Why, it is still here!" Many of
them look frankly at the women, not in the spirit of gallant adventure,
but out of pure curiosity. In spite of the French reputation for roguish
licentiousness, the sex question never seems to intrude very much along
the battle-line, perhaps because there is so little to suggest it.
Certainly conversation at the front ignores sex altogether, and speech
there is remarkably decent and clean. Of course, when music-hall songs
are sung at the concerts, the other sex is sometimes more than casually
mentioned. It is the comic papers which are responsible for the myth
that the period of furlough is spent in a Roman orgy; this is, of
course, true of some few, but for the great majority the reverse rules,
and une permission is spent in a typically French way, paying formal
calls to the oldest friends of the family, being with the family as much
as possible, and attending to such homely affairs as the purchase of
socks and underclothes. In the evening brave Jacques or Georges or