MY DEAR CHARLES,—­Reference the German withdrawal.  The matter is proceeding in machine-like order, and one of the first great men to cross No-Man’s Land was myself in the noblest of cars.  It was, I confess, a purely temporary and fortuitous arrangement which put me in such a conveyance, but I had the feeling that it was excellently fitted to my particular form of greatness, and there were moments when I was so enamoured of it that I was on the verge of getting into a hole with it and staying hid there till the end of the War.  Just the right hole was provided at every cross-roads, but the driver wouldn’t try them and went round by the fields.

Of the flattened villages and the severed fruit-trees you will have read as much as I have seen.  It’s a gruesome business, but one charred village is much like another, and the sight is, alas, a familiar one nowadays.  For me all else was forgotten in speechless admiration of the French people.  Their self-restraint and adaptability are beyond words.  These hundreds of honest people, just relieved from the domineering of the Master Swine and restored to their own good France again, were neither hysterical nor exhausted.  They were just their happy selves, very pleased about it all, standing in their doorways, strolling about the market-place, watching the march of events as one might watch a play.  Every house had its tricolor bravely flying; where they’d got them from so soon I don’t know, but no Frenchman ever yet failed, under any circumstances, to produce exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment.  There was a nice old Adjoint at the Mairie who wasn’t for doing any business at all, with the English or anyone else, until a certain formality had been observed.  He had a bottle of old brandy in his cellar, which somehow or other had escaped the German eye these last two years.  This, said Monsieur, had first to be disposed of before any other business could conceivably be entertained ...  I gathered he had risked much, everything possibly, in keeping this bottle two years; but nothing on earth would induce him to retain it two minutes longer.

Madame, the doctor’s wife, approached me as a friend with a request.  Would I expedite a letter to her people, to announce her restoration to liberty?  I was at Madame’s disposal.  She handed me the letter.  I observed that the envelope was not closed down.  Madame’s look indicated that this was intentional, and her expression indicated that this was the sort of thing she was used to.

There was no weeping, no extreme emotion.  There was a philosophical detachment, a very prevalent humour, and, for the rest, signs of a quiet waiting for “The Day.”  There is only one day for France, the day of the arrival of Frenchmen on German soil.  When the English arrive in Germany there will be nothing doing, except some short and precise orders that we must salute all civilians and pay double for what we buy; but when the French arrive in Germany ... and Heaven send we are going to help them to get well in!