“There is some more,” added the Colonel, “but that will be sufficient to show you what that General thought of my boys. The Australians have a pretty high standard of their own, and they don’t pin orchids on other people unnecessarily. So we appreciated this.” He tapped the despatch. “The fact is, we were a band of brothers. The only occasion upon which we indulged in anything like ceremony or company manners was on the Fourteenth of July. (Corresponds to our Fourth.) I went along with a few others to represent the Americans at a swell lunch which was to be given in the Town Hall of Amiens in honor of the occasion. Amiens was under shell-fire at the time—right in view of the enemy, who were up on the high ground back of Villers Brettoneux, not ten miles away. But no one worried. We had our lunch in a cellar—French, British, Australian, and American officers. Some lunch! There were flowers on the table, too. Flowers! God knows where they came from. But that’s France—just France! They had to have them! Speeches, too, by Senators from Paris. Speeches, with German shells bursting in the street outside! They’re a great nation!”

“How did the British Tommy and the Doughboy get along?” inquired Floyd.

Colonel Graham’s frosty eyes twinkled.

“Each took a little while,” he said, “to get the combination of the other. You see, Major, we Americans consider ourselves the greatest nation on earth; and being Americans, we have to say so. Perhaps you have noticed that?”

“I have,” assented Floyd, “and I have lived in America long enough to learn to like hearing you say so. I like the young American’s passionate affection for his country and all her institutions, and his fixed determination to boost everything connected with her. The other day I was waiting in a village for an American Staff car which was being sent for me from Chaumont. I found one standing at the corner of the street, so I asked the chauffeur, thinking he might be from headquarters,—‘Where are you from?’ And he sat up, and replied, all in one breath, as if I had pressed a button,—‘Sir, I am from Marion, Ohio, the Greatest Steam-Shovel Producing Centre in the World!’—Just like that. That is what I call the right spirit. But I am interrupting you, Colonel.”

“You British, on the other hand,” resumed the Colonel, “also consider yourselves the greatest nation upon earth, but you do not say so to people, because you take it for granted that they know already!”

“A palpable hit, sir!” conceded Floyd, amid laughter.

“Well,” continued the Colonel, “those two points of view required quite a little adjustment, in the first place. Then again, there was a certain amount of ‘We-have-come-to-win-this-War-for you’ stuff from our boys, and a certain amount of ‘You-have-been-a-darned-long-while-making-up your-minds-about-it’ stuff from yours; and all these little corners had to be rounded off. On top of that there was a lot of very insidious, very clever work by German agencies, to make trouble between them. But you know about that. Then, they suffered from the handicap of a common language. Believe me, it’s a darned sight easier to keep on clubby terms with an ally whose language you don’t know than an ally whose language you do! But they are wise to one another now. Each has learned to respect and tolerate the other’s point of view. Of course they don’t understand one another; and never will. In that respect they are three thousand miles and several centuries apart. So they tacitly agreed to regard one another as crazy, but likeable—and leave it at that. In my view that is about as far as Anglo-American sentiment will ever get; and I shall be glad and satisfied if we here, who know, can maintain it at that standard—and it’s a higher standard than would appear at first sight. But I am talking too much. Where was I?”

“You were going to tell us a story about a tank, sir,” announced a respectful voice.

“Was I? Well, I might as well, for we can do nothing at this moment but wait. Up north, in September, my outfit were attacking day after day, with an escort of British tanks. The Germans were scared to death of those tanks. They did everything to stop them—brought up field guns to point-blank range; dug deep ditches, sprung land mines, and everything. The tanks suffered; but they never weakened, and most of them arrived at their objective. Their crews were marvels, and as for the children who commanded them, they were the cunningest little things you ever saw. One day we were detailed to carry a village, lying just back of a wood. We got there in the course of time, rather more easily than I had expected. When our men reached the little market-square, the reason revealed itself, in the form of a British tank, squatting plumb in the centre, having beaten us to it by four minutes. The usual infant was in charge, sitting on the top and twirling the place where he hoped one day to raise a mustache. When he saw our senior Major doubling down the street at the head of our men, he scrambled down and saluted very smart and proper, and said: ‘Major, I hereby hand over this village to you, as my superior officer, with cordial compliments, world without end, Amen!’—or words to that effect. The Major saluted back, very polite, and thanked him. Then the child said, kind of thoughtfully, jerking his head towards the grinning Tommies who were peeking out of the inside of the machine: ‘Still, we wish somehow, don’t you know, that we had something to show—just to show, sir, that we were here first.’ The Major thought a minute. Then he said, ‘I can fix that for you. I’ll give you a receipt for the village.’ And he did!” concluded the Colonel, amid a rising tide of laughter: “Received from officer commanding British Tank, ‘Bing Boy,’ one village—in poor condition.”

A salvo of German five-point-nine shells detonated amid the tree-roots far above their heads.

“Enemy getting nervous,” commented the Colonel. “Let him wait! Our artillery preparation isn’t due for an hour or more. Now, do you boys understand your orders? Any questions to ask? If so, shoot! That’s what I’m here for.”

He answered one or two eleventh-hour inquiries, and added: “Make the most of this attack. You may not have another opportunity.”

“You mean,” suggested Floyd, “that this battle is going to peter out?”

“I mean,” replied Colonel Graham deliberately, “that this war is going to peter out! And,” he added, with sudden concentrated bitterness, “if it does—now—we Americans are going to regret it for the rest of our history!”

The figures round the table sat up—quite literally. But one or two of the older men nodded their heads.

“If only we could be allowed to go on for another three months!” pursued the Colonel earnestly. “If only this great beautiful machine of an American Army could be given a chance to climb to its top speed! Then we should be functioning in proper shape—with our own guns, and our own tanks, plenty of horse-transport, and sufficient airplanes to direct our own fire and locate the enemy’s. We should be employing acquired experience instead of borrowed experience. We should have a trained Staff. We could send these great-hearted boys of ours into action adequately protected by a perfectly timed barrage. We could cut down our casualties seventy-five per cent, and make future victories a real matter for rejoicing. Of course it won’t matter to the folks at home. They have no opportunity to discriminate. They would cheer themselves hoarse over us if we were a Sanitary Section from the Base. But—we should like to show our friends over here what the American Army really is and not merely what it is going to be. And—we could extract some sort of adequate interest from the capital—the capital of our men’s lives—that we have been sinking in this year’s campaign. But there isn’t time! There isn’t time!” The old soldier’s gnarled fist dropped despairingly upon the trestle table. “We are still on our second speed, and however hard we may step on the gas, we can’t get real results for a little while to come. There isn’t time!”

There was a pause, while another salvo burst overhead. Then Jim Nichols asked:—

“Colonel, just why are you so sure? Is Peace really on the way?”

(Certainly, the question was worth asking. Within the past five days the following rumours have reached us, seriatim, supported by every variety of unreliable testimony:—

(1) Austria is trying to quit.

(2) The German Fleet has come out and surrendered.

(3) Kiel is in the hands of mutineers.

(4) The Kaiser and the Crown Prince have abdicated.

(5) Germany has asked for Peace, and Foch has given her seventy-two hours to accept his terms.)

“Not peace,” replied the Colonel, “nor anything like it. But an armistice may come any day. From all accounts the Hun is willing to submit to almost any terms so long as he can get out now, while the going is any good at all. That looks as if his military discipline were growing shaky—or else his civilian morale. Perhaps both. Anyway, he seems suspiciously anxious to quit. The real question is, What are we going to do about it?”

“I fancy we are going to accede to his request,” said Floyd. “In all probability, if we hammered him for another six weeks or so, we should have him in such a state that only a vacuum-cleaner could clear up the mess. We should probably take a million prisoners. We could sit down upon the Boche’s prostrate carcass and dictate any terms we pleased. But—but—but—well, there might be a miscarriage. We might find ourselves committed to another year’s campaigning. Labour, so-called, is getting fed up, and, though we are driving the Huns before us like sheep, an avoidable casualty-list might produce a crisis in that quarter. As you say, Colonel, the big American machine is running more smoothly and powerfully every day; but France and Britain are down to a pretty fine edge now.”

“But your men and the French are all veterans, Major,” exclaimed Jim Nichols: “the finest material—”

“That is just the trouble,” said Floyd, shaking his head. “In this crazy war veterans are no use. To-day experience simply means loss of nerve. The most effective—the only effective—troops in this kind of warfare are young, green, ignorant recruits, and the British and French have precious few of that type left. They all know too much now! Moreover, the people at home are suffering badly. They have not too much to eat, and the casualty-list is approaching the three-million mark. They are not kicking: they are prepared to go on for another twenty years if national security demands it: but it is the sacrifice of the last few lives in a war at which national conscience boggles, and I fancy that if our statesmen see a chance of a victorious peace they will grab it.”

“I am afraid you are right, Major,” sighed the Colonel. “Looks as if we were going to weaken on the proposition of the knock-out blow. If we do, two things are going to happen. First, hundreds and thousands of American boys over at home are going to break their hearts. Think of it! Months and months of hard training and feverish anticipation in those big dreary camps. Then—on their top note of anticipation—Peace! Demobilization! Reaction! Instead of soldiers—and remember the title ‘soldier’ is the proudest in the world!—with a record of duty done and victory achieved, we shall have created a few million disgruntled, unemployed, unemployable might-have-beens—robbed, robbed, of their fair share in the greatest Adventure that life can offer!”

“Still,” rejoined Floyd, “you can honestly tell them this: When the credit for the victories of this summer comes to be apportioned, a big share must go to troops which have never set foot in France—which have never even had the chance to leave America: because it was the promise of their presence that enabled Foch to take the offensive right away—to take chances, in fact, which would have been utterly impossible if he had not known that he had the whole trained manhood of America behind him. So their labour was not altogether in vain, you see!”

But the old war-horse refused to be comforted.

“We ought to go on, Major,” he said doggedly. “That brings me to the other thing I said was going to happen. America, as a whole, has not yet felt this War: and she must, if she is to extract from it the benefit that belongs to her by right. What are a quarter of a million casualties to a nation the size of ours? We ought to suffer some more, if only to save us from unreadiness and mismanagement in the future. If we stop now, all that we shall have won will be the opportunity—and you know how our orators and patriotism-mongers will use it—to announce that America just stepped in, and the War was won! It may be true; it may not; but that line of talk never did any good to any nation. We here round this table all know that, and there are thousands of folk at home who know it too. Yes, we ought to get deeper in. God knows, no one wants to make widows and orphans. But a war, however bloody, which teaches a nation its own weaknesses, is worth while. Individuals suffer, as individuals must and do; but the commonwealth gains. It is true we are losing good Americans by the hundred to-day; but we are making thousands more. Listen. A few weeks ago I was in a Field Dressing-Station, talking to the wounded. One man replied to my enquiries in a strong foreign accent. He was a splendid-looking boy—a Dane, I guess. I asked him: ‘What nationality are you?’ He looked just the least bit surprised, and replied: ‘American, sure!’ I said: ‘I can see that, son: but tell me, what made you an American?’ And he laid his hand on a great whale of a wound in his side, and he said, quite simply: ‘That made me an American!’ And that is what this War is doing for our big, beloved, half-grown country—making Americans! And now we’ve got to quit!”

“Still,” smiled Floyd, “you have made a good many. You have a couple of million of them over here now, and they will form a very useful leaven when they get home again. He is a great man, your Doughboy, Colonel. I have been privileged to make his acquaintance, and I have seen him fight: and I take off my tin hat to him, because I know what his difficulties have been. When he gets home he will no doubt be smothered in praise—by people incapable of discriminating between the easy and the difficult things that he did. But he will deserve all that he gets, and more, on account of the difficulties he overcame which people at home know nothing about—the things that never get into the papers.”

There was a sympathetic murmur from the company. The Colonel nodded.

“You are right, Major,” he said cheerfully. “Meanwhile, I wish to report that I feel much better. I needed that outburst badly. Moreover, I don’t say that I have any particular personal objection to a spell of Peace. I guess we can all do with a vacation. How will you celebrate your first day, Major?”

“I don’t know,” replied Floyd thoughtfully. “The idea of Peace does not particularly appeal to me in my present frame of mind. More than three quarters of a million of my fellow-countrymen have been killed during the past four years—most of them in their early twenties—and at my time of life I feel almost ashamed to be alive. And the idea of ‘settling down’ does not altogether attract me, either. As you very rightly observe, Colonel, the community may benefit by a good searching war, but, by God! individuals suffer. Especially if they happen to be of that misguided type which hastens to get into the scrap first, while wiser persons are deciding whether to volunteer or be fetched. That was when I lost my friends—in nineteen-fourteen and fifteen. That stratum of our community has almost ceased to exist. My own Battalion has been replaced—which means wiped out—thirteen times in four years, and I, even I, only am left. So I view the prospect of settling down with mixed feelings. Tell us how you propose to spend the first day of the Armistice, Colonel—when it comes!”

“I?” said the Colonel. “I shall start by sending a cable to the best little woman in America, in a little town in Tennessee that you never heard of, Major; telling her that I have come through, and that she and the bunch of marauders that belong to both of us—we have two boys and two girls—can quit worrying. Then I shall sit down and amplify my sentiments in a letter. But I am old and sentimental. What will you do, Jim Nichols?”

“I guess I’ll muster the Battalion,” replied the newly promoted and zealous second in command, “and have them clean up their rifles and equipment. They’re in a terrible mess, after the time we’ve been having.”

“Well, well! We’ll try some one less wedded to his duty!” laughed the Colonel. “What will you do, boy?” He turned to the youthful aviator.

Master Harvey Blane meditated. He had twice been wounded, once brought down in flames, and several times driven down out of control.

“I guess,” he said at last, “I shall go along down to the airdrome, and order out my machine, and have the boys tune her up very carefully. Then I shall have her wheeled out, and I shall climb on board and test all the contacts. Then I shall run the engine for a spell, and maybe take a turn around the airdrome, along the ground. Then I shall load up with bombs. Then I shall look up in the sky, and say: ‘Boys, I don’t think after all I feel like going out to-day. Run her back and put her to bed!’”

There was appreciative laughter at this, and Floyd said:

“That reminds me of an English subaltern of my acquaintance who came home for a week’s leave after four continuous months in the Salient, in nineteen-fifteen—and after that experience one required a little leave! He took a room at the Savoy and left certain explicit instructions with the night clerk about the time he was to be called. In due course, at three o’clock in the morning, the telephone beside his bed rang, and our friend sat up and answered it. The voice of the clerk said: ‘Colonel’s compliments, sir, and he wants you in the firing-trench immediately.’ And the child replied: ‘Give my compliments to the Colonel, and request him to go to Hell!’ Then he rolled over and slept till the afternoon. His real leave had begun! He was an artist like yourself, Blane!”

As Floyd concluded this highly probable anecdote, in his usual sepulchral tone, a signal orderly came down the steps that led to the regions above, and handed a despatch to the Adjutant.

Colonel Graham glanced affectionately around the table.

“I hope you boys will all be in a position soon to send me such a message!” he said. “But only for a week or two, mind! Leave, not Demobilization. We haven’t finished the War yet.”

The Adjutant handed him the despatch. Colonel Graham adjusted his glasses, read it, and looked up.

“Yes, we have,” he said. “The rumours were true. German delegates are to meet Allied delegates at five o’clock this morning, when the Allied terms will be dictated. Dictated, not discussed!” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “They are being dictated at this moment. Boys, we are through! For better or worse, we are through with this War! Countermand the attack.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GALLIA VICTRIX

Lastly, two friends of ours in Paris.

This is an unsatisfactory world, and our destinies are not always controlled as we could wish. But occasionally—just once or twice, maybe, in a lifetime—something happens (or is arranged for us) which so utterly transcends our own dreams and deserts as to restore our faith in an All-Wise and All-Benevolent Providence once and for all.

Frances Lane had been transferred to a military hospital in Paris. Here she discharged, cheerfully and efficiently, those minor and unheroic duties which the professional healer is accustomed to depute to the amateur.

One morning, during the last week in October, she was called upon in the ordinary course of business to sit by the bedside of a young officer who had just been wheeled from the operating-room, until such time as he should “come out of the ether.” And the young officer was Boone Cruttenden. Hence the foregoing appreciative reference to the workings of Providence.

Boone duly emerged from one form of oblivion to enter upon another, hardly less complete. In the first, he had been oblivious to everything. In the second, he was oblivious to everything and everybody save Frances. The malady proved catching, and both patients imagined, as usual, that their symptoms were undetected by the outside world. So the War had to take care of itself for a while.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year nineteen-eighteen these twain found themselves wandering side by side—with Frances on the right, ferociously interposing her slim person between Boone’s strapped and bandaged arm and the rest of humanity—through the congested Boulevards; waiting, waiting, like every one else, for Something Official to be announced.

During the previous day tout Paris, in Sabbath attire, had roamed restlessly, silently, expectantly, about the streets. Night had fallen, and the throng had not abated. The great city was as murky as ever. Peace might be hovering in the air, but War precautions still prevailed on earth. Small, ghostly, electric lights, encased in dark-blue glass, still indicated rather than illuminated the wayfarer’s path. At intervals a discreet, faintly luminous sign, bearing the legend Abri, proffered a refuge from the terror that flies by night. Through this gross darkness, silently, furtively, the great concourse drifted and groped. Only over La Place de la Concorde, like the promise of victorious Dawn, the sky was bright with the lights newly unveiled to illuminate the great array of trophies—German guns, German aeroplanes, festoons of German helmets—set up for the advancement of the latest War Loan—“The Loan of the Last Quarter of an Hour,” as the posters happily described it.

On Monday morning the crowd was still there. It had contrived to slip home and put on its working-clothes, but that was all. The shops were open, but no one appeared to be buying anything. There was little sound. Occasionally the most unlikely-looking persons were accosted and asked, “On a signé?” But it did not matter, as no one ever stayed for an answer. Paris was waiting.

Then in a moment, about the stroke of eleven, the electric discharge came. Cries arose from various parts of the city. The newspaper offices and information bureaux broke into simultaneous, preconcerted animation.

In the Boulevard des Italiens, Boone and Frances, standing amid a vast throng facing the office of Le Matin, suddenly became aware, between two intervals of whispered confidences, that the huge map of the Western Front which covered the outer wall of the building, upon whose surface, through months of alternate agony and triumph, the ebb and flow of battle had been recorded by an undulating array of tiny flags, was being obliterated by a series of great printed slips, set one above another. The first of these had already been put in position. It said:

L’ARMISTICE EST SIGNÉE!

There came a buzz of excitement from the crowd, but little noise. The second slip was going up:—

“A-a-a-ah!” Here was a new thought. “We have won—won! We have beaten him—beaten the Boche! Enfin!” Men and women began to grip one another’s hands. The confused, uncertain buzzing rose higher, and the third slip went up:—

VIVE LA FRANCE!

That settled it. Next moment every hat was in the air. This was what everybody had been waiting for. Every French man, woman, and child was shouting, or crying, or embracing his neighbour. France! France! France—safe, free, victorious! France!

The last strip was unrolled:—

VIVENT LES ALLIÉS!

This time it was a different demonstration. Mingled with it were the enthusiastic cheers of the Parisian—the glowing, grateful tribute of the principal sufferer to the friends from all over the globe who had stood by her so stoutly. But in the main it was a deep, full-throated, Anglo-Saxon roar. In that crowd stood scores of British and hundreds of American soldiers. Higher and higher rose the cheering. They were not blind cheers. They were cheers of realization. A job of work well and truly completed! No more trenches! No more mud! No more Hell! No more death! Victory! Peace! Home! Sweethearts and Wives!

It was at this point, for the first time, that Boone Cruttenden kissed Frances Lane.

Thereafter, a brief period of uncertainty; then Paris settled down to rejoice in earnest.

It is not easy to rejoice suddenly—after four and a half years of stoical endurance. Still, by noon, Paris had settled down into her stride. The midinettes and ouvrières had come out for their dinner-hour, and none manifested any intention of returning to their labours. In the balconies outside the great millinery shops of the Rue de la Paix lovely creatures in kimonos, of the mannequin tribe, forgetful of the whole duty of a mannequin, which is to languish and glide, were hanging far out over the seething street, waving, weeping, and screaming like common persons.

The city had broken out into flags. Every window sported one. Every person carried one. None of your miniature, buttonhole affairs; but a good, flapping tricolour, or Union Jack, or Stars and Stripes, three feet square, carried over the shoulder on a pole six feet long.

Every one felt it incumbent upon him to show some slight civility to his neighbour. Soldiers saluted civilians; civilians embraced soldiers. Young military gentlemen kissed young ladies of the dressmaking persuasion. Exuberant daughters of Gaul joined hands and danced in a ring round embarrassed Anglo-Saxon officers, or tweaked the tails of the Glengarry bonnets of passing “Jocks.” At each porte-cochère snuffy concierges were phlegmatically tearing down the printed signs tacked upon the outer doors—Abri, 25 places—with an almost genial, “Et voilà!” A spirit of brotherly love prevailed: Boone and Frances saw a Paris taxi-driver distinctly slow down to avoid running over two young ladies whose cavaliers were playfully endeavouring to push them under his front wheels.

Presently an aged man in a blue blouse and a species of yachting-cap accosted them.

“Américain?” he demanded.

“Oui,” admitted Boone cautiously. He had already stalled off more than one would-be kisser.

“Blessé!” added Frances proudly.

The old gentleman shook hands with both of them, several times. Tears were running down his cheeks.

“Et maintenant,” he told them, “mon fils reviendra!”

And he hobbled off, to spread the great news elsewhere.

By the afternoon Paris had resolved itself into processions, mainly of soldiers and girls intertwined. Nearly everybody was singing. The French sang the Marseillaise, or Madelon. The English-speaking races devoted their energy, which was considerable, to a ditty with the mysterious refrain—

Ordinary vehicular traffic had almost entirely removed itself from the streets—probably from the instinct of self-preservation; for the few taxis which still survived carried never less than fifteen passengers, mostly on the roof. But huge military motor-trucks were ubiquitous. They were mainly British and American, but they bore a cargo completely representative of the Franco-Italo-Anglo-American entente, from the impromptu jazz-band of some thirty artistes perched upon the canvas roof, to the quartette of Australian soldiers and their lady friends sitting astride the radiator, bob-sleigh fashion, and wearing one another’s hats. It is needless to add that small French boys adhered like flies to all the less accessible parts of the vehicle.

As evening approached, and the electric arc-lamps awoke sizzling and sputtering from their enforced sleep of many gloomy months, one question began to exercise the collective faculties of the celebrants:—

“Where shall we go to-night?”

In most cases the answer was simple enough. At moments of intense mental exaltation the Anglo-Saxon in Paris turns to the Folies Bergères as simply and spontaneously as your true Moslem turns towards Mecca at the call of the muezzin. But Boone and Frances cared for none of these things.

“Listen, dear,” said Boone. “Let’s go to some place that’s quiet, where we can get by ourselves!”

“That will be too lovely,” agreed the other optimist, as she struggled panting through the press. “But where, darling?”

“Well, anyway, some place where we won’t meet any one we know,” said Boone, with the first instinct of the newly affianced; and Frances concurred.

After dinner, at a restaurant whose proprietor had exuberantly decided to celebrate the cessation of hostilities by trebling prices all round—a dinner at which purely private and domestic plans were raptly discussed amid an atmosphere of riotous publicity—they went to a revue.

It was not the usual French war-time revue for Anglo-Saxon consumption—with syncopated melodies and Cockney chorus-girls, imperfectly disguised as Parisiennes. It was a revue intime, intended for Paris alone, and was full of delicate fancies, and esoteric jokes, and mysterious topical allusions. Boone and Frances understood possibly one third of the dialogue and one in a hundred of the allusions. But they enjoyed the revue exceedingly. In their present frame of mind they would have enjoyed a Greenwich Village mystery-play, or Hamlet without cuts.

The audience was almost exclusively Parisian—officers in uniform; fair women wearing their jewels for the first time in months; stout, bald, bearded citizens of the bourgeoisie; here and there a British uniform. But so far as our own particular pair of truants could see, they were the only Americans present.

From the boulevard outside came the muffled tramp of feet; shouts of triumph; coy feminine shrieks; the honking of motor-horns; the clink of cow-bells—all suggestive of New Year’s Eve on Broadway. But inside the theatre the revue flowed smoothly on. No one on the stage made any allusion to the matter which was bursting all hearts. Not that there was no tension, both on the stage and in the auditorium. In theatre-land it is an understood thing that upon occasions of public rejoicing the actors and the play take second place, while the audience, for one night only, steps into the spot-light and plays “lead.” For instance, at this moment, not many blocks away, upon the stage of the Folies Bergères a self-appointed band of khaki-clad enthusiasts were assisting a hysterical corps de ballet in the execution of its duty.

But the revue intime pursued its intimate course. The piece was too delicately planned and executed to admit of unauthorized “gags” or inartistic interpolations. The audience, being Parisian, realized this, and waited. A time would come. Meanwhile, they leaned back in their seats, fanned themselves, and laughed at the jokes. But the fans moved very rapidly, and the laughs sounded rather breathless—rather like sobs.

Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, at the end of the second act, came the cracking-point.

The scene was laid in a restaurant. (Not that that mattered; a sewing-circle would have served equally well.) The glittering little company were already gathered upon the stage for the finale. They were headed by the leading lady—young, blonde, lovely; a shimmering vision in silver—prepared to burst into song. The orchestra gave her a preliminary chord; she opened her carmine lips. And then, to her entered from the wings, apparently without cue or authorization, the principal comedian, in the rôle of the head waiter of the restaurant—preposterous weeping whiskers and all.

He walked to the footlights, turned to the audience, and announced, quite simply:—

“L’Armistice est signée!”

The thing came with such consummate unexpectedness—the thing they had been expecting all evening—that for a moment no one stirred. Then, with a rush, the audience were on their feet; so were the orchestra. One long-drawn, triumphant electrifying chord sprang—apparently of its own volition—from their instruments, and a tremor ran through the theatre. The girl in silver stepped forward, and broke into the Marseillaise, with tears raining down her face.…

“Name of a name of a name!” An old French colonel, standing beside Boone, was muttering brokenly to himself. Boone could see his fingernails whiten as he grasped the back of the seat in front of him. Boone contented himself with Frances’s hand, and together they gazed up at the singer. There she stood—slender, radiant, beautiful, with not too much on, shedding abundant, genuine tears over an artificial complexion. She was Paris—Paris personified—Paris unclothed and in her right mind—Paris come to her own again.

The curtain fell—rose—fell—rose—while the storm of cheers raged. About the tenth time it rose again, to stay. The girl had both her hands pressed to her face, and her body was shaking. But another chord from the orchestra—the same chord—steadied her. She dropped her hands by her sides, uplifted her limpid voice, and sang the Marseillaise once more.

But this time her entourage had increased. Upon the outskirts of the stage—sidling in from the wings, peeping round the proscenium, mingling bodily with the glittering, shimmering company—there appeared another throng. Scene-shifters; dressers; lusty firemen; brown-faced poilus; gendarmes; mysterious individuals in decayed dress-suits; little boys and girls, indicative of the fact that even revue artists contract domestic ties—they all edged on, and sang the Marseillaise too. If the girl in the centre was Paris, this shining, grimy, patient, cheerful, wistful, triumphant throng around her was France. France—with the black shadow of forty years rolled away from her horizon! France—the much-enduring, the all-surviving, the indomitable; with her beloved capital inviolate still, and her lost provinces coming back to her! Gallia Victrix. No wonder they sang. La Guerre est gagnée—at last!

There let us leave them all—on the crest of the wave. La Guerre est gagnée. God send that we tackle La Paix as successfully!

THE END

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A