It is a long train and there is only one dining-car.  Those who don’t get into the car at Amiens don’t dine; there is accordingly some competition, especially on the part of the military element, of which the majority is proceeding to Paris on leave and doesn’t propose to start its outing by going without its dinner.  Only the very fit or the very cunning survive.  Having got in myself among the latter category I was not surprised to see, among the former category, a large and powerful Canadian Corporal.

If he can afford to pay for his dinner there is no reason, I suppose, why even a corporal should not dine.  If he can manage to snaffle a seat in the car there is certainly no reason why a French Commandant should not dine.  There is every reason, I imagine, for railway companies to furnish their dining-cars with those little tables for two which bring it about that a pair of passengers, who have never seen each other before and have not elected to meet on this occasion, find themselves together, for a period, on the terms of the most complete and homely intimacy.  Lastly, the attendant had every reason to put the Corporal and the Commandant to dine together, for there was nowhere else to put either of them.

What would have happened if this had taken place ten years ago, and the French Commandant had been an English Major?  The situation, of course, simply could not have arisen; it would have been unthinkable.  But if it had arisen the train would certainly have stopped for good; probably the world would have come to an end.  As it was, what did happen?  Let me say at once that both the Corporal and the Commandant behaved with a generosity which was entirely delightful; the Corporal’s was pecuniary generosity, the Commandant’s generosity of spirit.  This was as it should be, and both were true to type.

Quick though the French are at the uptake, it took the good Commandant just a little while to settle down to the odd position.  This was not the size and shape and manner of man with whom he was used to take his meals.  As an officer one feels one’s responsibilities on these public occasions, and I felt I ought to intervene and to do something to rearrange the general position.  But at the start I caught the Corporal’s eye, and there was in it such a convincing look of “Whatever I may do I mean awfully well,” that I just sat still and did nothing.

The awkward pause was over before the soup was finished.  Rough good-nature and subtle good sense soon combined to eliminate arbitrary distinctions.  The Commandant won the first credit by starting a conversation; it was really the only thing to do.  Had the Commandant and I been opposite each other we should probably have dined in polite silence.  But the Corporal was one of those red-faced burly people with whom you have, if you are close to them, either to laugh or fight.