Brokers and carpenters, bankers and mechanics, clerks and labourers, the new army is like the army of France, composed of all classes.  One evening I had a chat with two young fellows in a battalion quartered in the village, who were seated beside the road.  Both came from Buckinghamshire.  One was a schoolmaster and the other an architect.  They were “bunkies,” pals, chums.

“When did you enlist?” I asked.

“In early September, after the Marne retreat.  We thought that it was our duty, then; but we’ve been a long time arriving.”

“How do you like it?”

“We are not yet masters of the language, we find,” said the schoolmaster, “though I had a pretty good book knowledge of it.”

“I’m learning the gestures fast, though,” said the architect.

“The French are glad to see us,” said the schoolmaster.  “They call us the Keetcheenaires.  I fancy they thought we were a long time coming.  But now we are here, I think they will find that we can keep up our end.”

They had the fresh complexions which come from healthy, outdoor work.  There was something engaging in their boyishness and their views.  For they had a wider range of interests than that professional soldier, Mr. Atkins, these citizens who had taken up arms.  They knew what trench-fighting meant by work in practice trenches at home.

“Of course it will not be quite the same; theory and practice never are,” said the schoolmaster.

“We ought to be well grounded in the principles,” said the architect thoughtfully, “and they say that in a week or two of actual experience you will have mastered the details that could not be taught in England.  Then, too, having shells burst around you will be strange at first.  But I think our battalion will give a good account of itself, sir.  All the Bucks men have!” There crept in the pride of regiment, of locality, which is so characteristically Anglo-Saxon.

They change life at the front, these new army men.  If a carpenter, a lawyer, a sign-painter, an accountant, is wanted, you have only to speak to a new army battalion commander and one is forthcoming—­a millionaire, too, for that matter, who gets his shilling a day for serving his country.  Their intelligence permitted the architect and the schoolmaster to have no illusions about the character of the war they had to face.  The pity was that such a fine force as the new army, which had not become trench stale, could not have a free space in which to make a great turning movement, instead of having to go against that solid battle front from Switzerland to the North Sea.