Of all the soldiers’ wants the most imperative appears to be the harmless necessary cigarette.  All their letters clamor for tobacco in that form.  “We can’t get a decent smoke here,” says one writer.  An army airman “simply craves for cigarettes and matches.”  From a cavalryman comes the appeal that a few boxes of cigarettes and some thick chocolate would be luxuries.  “Just fancy,” to quote from another letter, “one cigarette among ten of us—­hardly one puff a-piece.”

In the French hospitals the wounded men are being treated with the greatest kindness, and during convalescence are being loaded with luxuries.  “Spoilt darlings,” one Scottish nurse in Paris says about them, “but who could help spoiling them?” They are so happy and cheerful, so grateful for every little service, so eager to return to the firing line in order to “get the war over and done with.”  “We’ve promised to be home by Christmas,” they say, “and that turkey and plum-pudding will be spoilt if we don’t turn up.”

Home by Christmas!  That is Tommy Atkins’ idea of a “Non-stop run to Berlin”—­the facetious notice he printed in chalk on the troop trains at Boulogne as, singing “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” he rolled away to the greatest battles that have ever seared the face of Europe.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote A:  Extract from The Times report of the German Emperor’s Army Orders, dated Headquarters, Aix-la-Chapelle, August 19th, 1914.]

[Footnote B:  Copyright Chappell & Co., Ltd., 41 East 34th St., New York.]

[Footnote C:  Daily Express, Sept. 25th, 1914.]

[Footnote D:  The Irish Guards were created entirely on the initiative of Queen Victoria, and as a recognition of the fine achievements of “Her brave Irish” in the South African War.]

[Footnote E:  Gunner Batey, Royal Garrison Artillery, writes of a comrade, Gunner Spencer Mann:  “He seems in his glory during the fighting.  He fears nothing, and is always shouting, ’Into them, lads:  the sooner we get through, the sooner we’ll get home.’”]

[Footnote F:  “The German officers are a rum lot,” writes Sergeant W. Holmes; “they lead from the rear all the time.”]

[Footnote G:  “When they are working hardest their rations would not do for a tom-tit,” says Sergeant J. Baker.]

[Footnote H:  This letter was written to the son of a London vicar, and published in The Times, Sept. 12th, 1914.]

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