This is not the only Scot who has lost his kilt in the war.  One of the Royal Engineers gives a comic picture of a Highlander who appears to have lost nearly every article of clothing he left home in.  When last seen by this letter writer he was resplendent in a Guardsman’s tunic, the red breeches of a Frenchman, a pair of Belgian infantry boots, and his own Glengarry!  “And when he wants to look particularly smart,” adds the Engineer, “he puts on a Uhlan’s cloak that he keeps handy!”

As another contribution to the humor of life in the trenches and, incidentally, to the discussion of soldier songs, it is worth while quoting from a letter signed “H.L.,” in The Times, this specimen verse of the sort of lyric that delights Tommy Atkins.  It is the work of a Sergeant of the Gordon Highlanders, and as the marching song in high favor at Aldershot, must come as a shock to the ideals of would-be army laureates: 

“Send out the Army and Navy,
Send out the rank and file,
(Have a banana!)
Send out the brave Territorials,
They easily can run a mile. 
(I don’t think!)
Send out the boys’ and the girls’ brigade,
They will keep old England free: 
Send out my mother, my sister, and my brother,
But for goodness sake don’t send me.”

It is doggerel, of course, but it has a certain cleverness as a satire on the music-hall song of the day, and the Gordons carried it gaily with them to their battlefields, blending it in that odd mixture of humor and tragedy that makes up the soldier’s life.  The bravest, it is truly said, are always the happiest, and of the happy warriors who have fallen in this campaign one must be remembered here in this little book of British heroism.  He died bravely on the hill of Jouarre, near La Ferte, and his comrades buried him where he fell.  On a little wooden cross are inscribed the simple words, “T.  Campbell, Seaforths.”

VII

THE INTREPID IRISH

“There’s been a divil av lot av talk about Irish disunion,” says Mr. Dooley somewhere, “but if there’s foightin’ to be done it’s the bhoys that’ll let nobody else thread on the Union Jack.”  That is the Irish temperament all over, and in these days when history is being written in lightning flashes the rally of Ireland to the old flag is inspiring, but not surprising.

Political cynics have always said that England’s difficulty would be Ireland’s opportunity, but they did not reckon with the paradoxical character of the Irish people.  England’s difficulty has indeed been Ireland’s opportunity—­the opportunity of displaying that generous nature which has already contributed thousands of men to the Expeditionary Force, and is mustering tens of thousands more under the patriotic stimulus of those old political enemies, Mr. John Redmond and Sir Edward Carson.  The civil war is “put off,” as one Irish soldier expresses it; old enmities are laid aside and Orange and Green are righting shoulder to shoulder, on old battlefields whose names are writ in glory upon the colors.