Tommy never instructed us by word of mouth. He lived his creed in his daily
rounds. He never knows that he is beaten, therefore a beating is never his.
We have gained the same outlook, simply by association with him.

Were I a general and had I a position to _take_, I would choose soldiers of
one nation as quickly as another--French, Australians, Africans, Indians,
Americans or Canadians. Were I a general and had I a position to _retain_,
to hold against all odds, then, without a moment's hesitation, I would send
English troops and English troops only.

Now and again an American or a Canadian newspaper would come our way.
"Anything to read" is a never-ending cry at the front, and every scrap of
newspaper is read, discussed and read again. In the early days of 1914-15,
these newspapers would have long and weighty editorials which called forth
longer and weightier letters from "veritas" and "old subscriber." We boys
read those editorials and letters, and wondered; wondered how sane men
could waste time in writing such stuff, how sane men could set it in type
and print it, and more than all we wondered how sane men could read it.
"Who started the war?" they asked.

"Bah!" we would say to one another, "who started the war? If only those
folks who write and print and read such piffle, no matter what their
nationality, could have had five minutes' look at the German trenches and
another five minutes' look at the French and British trenches--never again
would they query, 'Who started the war?'"

We of the Allied army knew nothing of trench warfare. After the fierce
onslaught on Paris, which failed, the Germans entrenched. Thank God, they
did. They entrenched, and by entrenching they have won the war for us. They