Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/27

 "This is not a day for satire," I said. "This is a day for sentiment. These people have escaped from frightful things"

Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome, mask-like face.

"Et tu, Brute? After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our tearing down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly old war!"

"I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It's real, here. We have liberated all these people."

"We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the canal? We come in and get the kudos. Presently the Generals will come and say, 'We did it. Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer us, good people, before we go to lunch.' They will not see behind them the legions they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal stupidity, invincible pomposity."

Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his:

"Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche."

He had composed it after a fourth whiskey on a cottage piano in his Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a General preparing a plan of battle—over the telephone. It never failed to make me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I thought, with the spirit about us.

"Let's put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day," I said.

Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, "Every inch a soldier—I don't think!"