small flaxen-haired boy on whose sailor's cap was the word "Vaterland."
"Disgraceful!" said Fortune, looking sternly at Harding. "In spite of all our atrocity tales, our propaganda of righteous hate, our training of the young idea that a Hun must be killed at sight—'the only good German is a dead German,' as you remember, Harding—these soldiers of ours are fraternising with the enemy and flirting with the enemy's fair-haired daughters, and carrying infant Huns shoulder-high. Look at that sergeant-major forgetting all my propaganda. Surely he ought to cut the throat of that baby Hindenburg? My heart aches for Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche. All his work undone. All his fury fizzled. Sad! sad!"
Harding looked profoundly uncomfortable at this sarcasm. He was billeted with a German family who treated him as an honoured friend. The mother, a dear old soul, as he reluctantly admitted, brought him an early cup of tea in the morning, with his shaving-water. Three times he had refused it, remembering his oath never to accept a favour from male or female Hun. On the fourth time his will-power weakened under the old lady's anxious solicitations and his desire for the luxury of tea before dressing. He said Danke schön, and afterwards reproached himself bitterly for his feeble resistance. He was alarmed at his own change of heart towards these people. It was impossible for him to draw back solemnly or with pompous and aloof dignity when the old lady's grandchild, a little girl of six, waylaid him in the hall, dropped a curtsey in the pretty German style, and then ran forward to kiss his hand and say, "Guten Tag, Herr Officer!"
He bought a box of chocolate for her in the Hohestrasse and then walked with it irresolutely, tempted to throw it into the Rhine, or to give it to a passing Tommy.
