With the French in France and Salonika Part 15

--all of his unseen audience hastily fled.

There was also Private Watts, who was mending shoes. When the week before Lord Kitchener visited St. Dunstan's, Watts had joked with him. I congratulated him on his courage.

"What was your joke?" I inquired.

"He asked me when I was a prisoner with the Germans how they fed me, and I said: 'Oh, they gave me five beefsteaks a day.'"

"That was a good joke," I said. "Did Kitchener think so?"

The man had been laughing, pleased and proud. Now the blank eyes turned wistfully to my companion.

"Did his lords.h.i.+p smile?" he asked.

Those blind French officers at the Crillon in Paris and these English Tommies are teaching a great lesson. They are teaching men who are whining over the loss of money, health, or a job, to be ashamed. It is not we who are helping them, but they who are helping us. They are showing us how to face disaster and setting an example of real courage.

Those who do not profit by it are more blind than they.

THE END.