winked at me under the very nose of the great General whom he had set to music—"Blear-eyed Bill, the Boche-Breaker," who stood magnificent with his great chest emblazoned with ribbons. The Prince of Wales was there, shifting from one leg to another, chatting gaily with a group of Staff-officers. A bevy of French girls advanced with enormous bouquets and presented them to the Prince and his fellow-officers. The Prince laughed and blushed, like a schoolboy, sniffed at the flowers, did not know what to do with them. The other officers held the bouquets with equal embarrassment, with that strange English shyness which not even war could cure.
Some officers close to me were talking of the German plea for Armistice.
"It's abject surrender!" said one of them.
"The end!" said another, very solemnly. "Thank God."
"The end of a dirty business!" said a young machine-gun officer. I noticed that he had three wound-stripes.
One of them, holding a big bouquet, began to dance, pointing his toes, cutting abbreviated capers in a small space among his comrades.
"Not too quick for me, old dears! Back to peace again!. . . Back to life! Hooray!"
The colours of many flags fluttered upon the gables of the Place d'Armes, and the balconies were draped with the Tricolour, the Union Jack, and the Stars and Stripes. Old citizens wore tall hats saved up for this day, and girls had taken their lace from hiding-places where the Germans had not found it, and wore it round their necks and wrists for the honour of this day. Old women in black bonnets sat in the centre of window-places and clapped their hands—their wrinkled, hard-working old hands—to every British soldier who passed, and thousands were passing. Nobody heard a word of the
