And then work began in real earnest. At least, it would have, if within a week the Armistice had not stepped in. I knew it first by the bonne bursting into my bedroom with the shrill cry ‘1870 is avenged!’ The tumult in the street outside was an echo of her words. A statue of France with a broken sword stood there down in the public square below me, in memory of 1870, and round it all day long surged cheering crowds. The statue itself was smothered in flowers, November though it was. Only the figure of France could be seen standing breast high in a sea of roses. ‘Les voilà, Mlle,' went on Germaine. ‘Even the English officers are dancing.’ They were singing and marching too in serried rows down the Grande Rue. We saw no poilus but French marines, with that odd red hackle in their caps, walked arm in arm with Belgian troops. From the pavement stolid groups of Chinese, cabbage in hand, surveyed them curiously. A dark French Senegalese soldier from the Military Hospital on the Plage jogged past a Portuguese — worst behaved of all the Allies and sent here to be shipped home as soon as ever occasion afforded. ‘Aux armes, citoyens,’ they played over and over again and I had hardly got over the marvel of the ‘Marseillaise’ being played for ‘peace’ when, faint and halting at first, but more confidently as it went on, the strains of ‘Tipperary’ rose to my ears. They had not played it much since 1914, but it was the first thing they thought of today. ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go.’ The Band went on — a French band — playing ‘Tipperary’. But it was useless. If the ‘Marseillaise’ failed to suggest peace, ‘Tipperary’ called up only 1914 - the August days of it. All day long the surging crowds cheered round the statue. 1870 was avenged. << less