Another boy said, "I am a citizen of no mean Empire, but what the hell is the Empire going to do for me when the next shell blows off both my bleeding legs?"
This remark was also received by a gust of subdued laughter, silenced for a moment by a roar and upheaval of masonry somewhere by the ruins of the Cloth Hall.
"Soldiers are prisoners," said a boy without any trace of humor. "You're lagged, and you can't escape. A 'blighty' is the best luck you can hope for."
"I don't want to kill Germans," said a fellow with a superior accent. "I've no personal quarrel against them; and, anyhow, I don't like butcher's work."
"Christian service, that's what the padre calls it. I wonder if Christ would have stuck a bayonet into a German stomach--a German with his hands up. That's what we're asked to do."
"Oh, Christianity is out of business, my child. Why mention it? This is war, and we're back to the primitive state--B.C. All the same, I say my little prayers when I'm in a blue funk.
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child."
This last remark was the prize joke of the evening, received with much hilarity, not too loud, for fear of drawing fire--though really no Germans could have heard any laughter in Ypres.
Nearby, their officer was spending the night. We called on him, and found him sitting alone in a dugout furnished by odd bits from the wrecked houses, with waxen flowers in a glass case on the shelf, and an old cottage clock which ticked out the night, and a velvet armchair which had been the pride of a Flemish home. He was a Devonshire lad, with a pale, thoughtful face, and I was sorry for him in his loneliness, with a roof over his head which would be no proof against a fair-sized shell.
He expressed no surprise at seeing us. I think he would not have been surprised if the ghost of Edward the Black Prince had called on him. He would have greeted him with the same politeness and offered him his green armchair.
The night passed. The guns slackened down before the dawn. For a little while there was almost silence, even over the trenches. But as the first faint glow of dawn crept through the darkness the rifle-fire burst out again feverishly, and the machine-guns clucked with new spasms of ferocity. The boys of the New Army, and the Germans facing them, had an attack of the nerves, as always at that hour.