It's the labouring class. One by one, the bourgeois have slipped
out of it. Got themselves the fat jobs at the rear, work in
hospitals... anything but to stay out in the front-line trenches
with us poor rats of working-people! Isn't that so?'

"He appealed to his companion, who answered again very calmly (it
was extraordinary how they didn't seem to mind differing diametrically
from each other. I suppose they had the long habit of arguing
together). 'No, it's not so! In my company there are as many
bourgeois as labouring men.'

"The first man never paid the least attention to these brief denials
of everything he was saying. 'It's the proletariat that always
pays...isn't it so, Ma'ame! Peace or war, old times or new, it's
always the poor who pay all the debts! And they're doing it to such
a tune now in France that there won't be any left, when the war is
over... oh, it's got to stop. There's no use talking about it...and
it WILL, too, one of these days...who CARES how it stops! Life...any
sort of life...is better than anything else.'

"At this the other soldier said, 'Don't pay any attention to him,
Madame, he always goes on so...but he'll stick it out just the
same. We all will. That's the nature of the Frenchman, Madame. He
must have his grievance. He must grumble and grumble but when it's
necessary, he goes forward just the same...Only he has to talk such
a lot before!'

"'Oh, yes, we'll HOLD them, fast enough!' agreed the first one.
'We'll never let them get past us!' (This type of declaring poilu
is much given to contradicting himself flatly!) 'But never, never,