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　　CHAPTER IX

　　Some of our officers stationed in Amiens, and billeted in private houses, became very friendly with the families who received them. Young girls of good middle class, the daughters of shopkeepers and schoolmasters, and merchants in a good way of business, found it delightful to wait on handsome young Englishmen, to teach them French, to take walks with them, and to arrange musical evenings with other girl friends who brought their young officers and sang little old French songs with them or English songs in the prettiest French accent. These young officers of ours found the home life very charming. It broke the monotony of exile and made them forget the evil side of war. They paid little gallantries to the girls, bought them boxes of chocolate until fancy chocolate was forbidden in France, and presented flowers to decorate the table, and wrote amusing verses in their autograph albums or drew sketches for them. As this went on they gained to the privilege of brotherhood, and there were kisses before saying “good night” outside bedroom doors, while the parents downstairs were not too watchful, knowing the ways of young people, and lenient because of their happiness. Then a day came in each one of these households when the officer billeted there was ordered away to some other place. What tears! What lamentations! And what promises never to forget little Jeanne with her dark tresses, or Suzanne with the merry eyes! Were they not engaged? Not formally, perhaps, but in honor and in love. For a time letters arrived, eagerly waited for by girls with aching hearts. Then picture post-cards with a line or two of affectionate greeting. Then nothing. Nothing at all, month after month, in spite of all the letters addressed with all the queer initials for military units. So it happened again and again, until bitterness crept into girls' hearts, and hardness and contempt.

　　“In my own little circle of friends,” said a lady of Amiens, “I know eighteen girls who were engaged to English officers and have been forsaken. It is not fair. It is not good. Your English young men seem so serious, far more serious than our French boys. They have a look of shyness which we find delightful. They are timid, at first, and blush when one pays a pretty compliment. They are a long time before they take liberties. So we trust them, and take them seriously, and allow intimacies which we should refuse to French boys unless formally engaged. But it is all camouflage. At heart your English young men are just flirts. They play with us, make fools of us, steal our hearts, and then go away, and often do not send so much as a post-card. Not even one little post-card to the girls who weep their hearts out for them! You English are all hypocrites. You boast that you 'play the game.' I know your phrase. It is untrue.

　　“You play with good girls as though they were grues, and that no Frenchman would dare to do. He knows the difference between good girls and bad girls, and behaves, with reverence to those who are good. When the English army goes away from France it will leave many bitter memories because of that.” Now It Can Be Told