It was sung boisterously, in a defiant tone of mockery of the desire it expressed, and thus tremendously gained in pathos.  They did want to go home—­naturally.  It was sung with the same spirit our men sing “We won’t come back till it’s over, over there!” The difference is that these Britishers have been over there, have seen the horrors face to face, have tasted the sweets of home, and in spite of heartsickness and seasickness are resolved to see it through.  Such is the morale of the British army.  I have not the slightest doubt that it will be the morale of our own army also, but at present the British are holding the fort.  Tommy would never give up the war, but he has had a realistic taste of it, and his songs reflect his experience.  Other songs reached my ears each night, above the hissing and pounding of the Channel seas, but the unseen group returned always to this.  One thought of Agincourt and Crecy, of Waterloo, of the countless journeys across this same stormy strip of water the ancestors of these man had made in the past, and one wondered whether war were eternal and inevitable, after all.

And what does Tommy think about it—­this war?  My own limited experience thoroughly indorses Mr. Galsworthy’s splendid analysis of British-soldier psychology that appeared in the December North American.  The average man, with native doggedness, is fighting for the defence of England.  The British Government itself, in its reconstruction department for the political education of the wounded, has given partial denial to the old maxim that it is the soldier’s business not to think but to obey; and the British army is leavened with men who read and reflect in the long nights of watching in the rain, who are gaining ideas about conditions in the past and resolutions concerning those of the future.  The very army itself has had a miracle happen to it:  it has been democratized—­and with the cheerful consent of the class to which formerly the possession of commissions was largely confined.  Gradually, to these soldier-thinkers, as well as to the mass of others at home, is unfolding the vision of a new social order which is indeed worth fighting for and dying for.

III

At last, our knees cramped and our feet soaked, we saw the lights of the French port dancing across the veil of rain, like thistledowns of fire, and presently we were at rest at a stone quay.  As I stood waiting on the deck to have my passport vised, I tried to reconstruct the features of this little seaport as I had seen it, many years before, on a bright summer’s day when I had motored from Paris on my way to London.  The gay line of hotels facing the water was hidden in the darkness.  Suddenly I heard my name called, and I was rescued from the group of civilians by a British officer who introduced himself as my host.  It was after nine o’clock, and he had been on the lookout for me since half past seven.