The first sign I saw of our arrival in this country was a derelict mess-tin on a country station platform; at the next station I saw a derelict rifle; at the next a whole derelict kit, and lastly a complete-in-all-parts derelict soldier.  He was surrounded by a small crowd of native men, women and children, anxious to show their appreciation of his nation by assisting himself.  They were doing their utmost to ascertain his needs; they were trying him with slices of bread, a fiasco of chianti, words of intense admiration, flowers.  It was none of these things he wanted; he had only missed his train and wanted to know what to do about it.  But how were they to know that?  When a Latin misses his train he doesn’t sit down stolidly and think slowly.

I went to his aid.  From the manner in which he rose to salute me they guessed that I was the Commander-in-Chief of all the English, and were for giving me an ovation.  Thomas explained his trouble to me in half-a-dozen words; I solved it for him in even fewer.  Thomas and I quite understood each other, and there was no want of sympathy and fellow-feeling between us.  To the small crowd, however, this was the extreme of brutal curtness.  They now thought I was of the English carabinieri, and that Thomas was being led off to his execution.  They were visibly cowed.

But the situation is not so simple and clearly defined as it was in the first place.  In the old days either we were English and they weren’t, or they were French and we weren’t.  There was no tertium quid.  Now things are more complicated.  As Thomas and I stood on the platform, loving each other silently and unostentatiously, a cheery musical train of poilus laboured into the station.  There was nothing silent or curt about them:  they were all for bread and chianti and flowers and ovations or any other old thing the crowd cared to offer.  Anything for a jest and to pass the time of day.  Between the French troops and the Italian crowd the matter was clear enough.  Next-door neighbours, molested by the same gang of roughs in the same brutal manner, quite understand each other and the general situation when they climb over each other’s garden fences to put the matter to rights.  It was the presence of Thomas and myself which put such an odd complexion on the whole affair.

Between ourselves and the crowd it was “Long live Italy!” and “Long live England!” Between the poilus and the crowd it was “Long live Italy!” and “Long live France!” But between the poilus and ourselves there were no signs of any desire that England or France might endure another day.  And yet the crowd couldn’t suppose that we didn’t like each other, for the knowing looks which passed between the hilarious poilu and slowly smiling Thomas clearly indicated some strange and intimate relation.  The crowd just didn’t know what to make of it all and what exactly was between these odd strangers, who seemed