break our hearts by their going.

Death may be regarded as a funeral or as a Columbus expedition to
worlds unknown--it may be seized upon as an opportunity for weeping
or for a display of courage. From the first day in her choice England
never hesitated; like a boy set free from school, she dashed out to
meet her danger with laughter. Her high spirits have never failed her.
Her cavalry charge with hunting-calls upon their lips. Her Tommies go
over the top humming music-hall ditties. The Hun is still "jolly old
Fritz." The slaughter is still "a nice little war." Death is still
"the early door." The mud-soaked "old Bills" of the trenches,
cheerfully ignoring vermin, rain and shell fire, continue to wind up
their epistles with, "Hoping this finds you in the pink, as it leaves
me at present." They are always in the pink for epistolary purposes,
whatever the strafing or the weather. That's England; at all costs,
she has to be a sportsman. I wonder she doesn't write on the crosses
above her dead, "_Yours in the pink:_ _a British soldier, killed in
action_." England is in the pink for the duration of the war.

The Frenchman cannot understand us, and I don't blame him. Our high
spirits impress him as untimely and indecent. War for him is not
a sport. How could it be, with his homesteads ravaged, his cities
flattened, his women violated, his populations prisoners in occupied
territories? For him war is a martyrdom which he embraces with a
fierce gladness. His spirit is well illustrated by an incident that
happened the other day in Paris. A descendant of Racine, a well-known
figure at the opera, was travelling in the Metro when he spotted a
poilu with a string of ten medals on his breast. The old aristocrat
went over to the soldier and apologised for speaking to him. "But," he
said, "I have never seen any poilu with so many decorations. You must