" FOYER DES ALLIES."
„HE, Ls belle Marguerite, un jus." There was an unholy twinkle in my eyes as I watched an outraged companion fill the proffered bowl with coffee, but my own turn was to oome. " Mad'm'zelle, I would like to be garcon in your café ; you have an air un peu rigolo." Whereat we laughed outright, for they are like children, the polies, and filled with devouring curiosity about everything connected with the canteen. From the illuminating Olisser la porte upon the door to the tiny label Cuiller a remuer tied to the spoons on the counter, every- thing, including Lee Dames Anglai.ses themselves, is of absorbing interest. We quickly became accustomed to La Mere, La Patronne, La Dame aux Lunettes, 1..ec Frisk, La Petite, or any other endearment that pleased their fancy, but there were momenta when even the most dignified and unapproachable was obliged to send S.O.S. messages for help, the trench-stained thing leaning over the counter loving Lee Anglaises and not being shy about saying so. Snatching the moment when duty chains you to your poet, ho tells you he is going en permission to Paris, or Mar- seilles, that he is very lonely, and if Mad'm'zelle . . . But at this point, if you are wise, you suggest that the chairs at the far end of the room are comfortable. If Monsieur would be so kind as to try one of them ? Monsieur is so kind, but the end is not yet. In thirty seconds he is back again, this time to plead for gniolle (rum). " A drop ? Just a tiny drop, Mad'm'zelle. Eli, there is none ? Male, cotstnent pa? How can one drink coffee without gniolle? Mad'm'zelle is not kind." So he pleads. If you ignore him, he keeps up an automatic "Dike, &tee. Ales Mad'm'zelle," that is maddening in its iterance ; if you tell him there is no alcohol iu the canteen, he is frankly sceptical. " What, not even a drop ? " " Monsieur, I assure you there is none." He shakes a reproachful head and goes away to drink his coffee in a babel of sound that rises and falls with almost rhythmical cadence, for the goal; is rarely silent. A French canteen is at least five times as noisy as an English one.
Curiously dramatic, though, at times is the sudden silence that falls upon the crowded room. It is just as though a giant knife cut swiftly downwards, shearing all the sound away. For a second, perhaps two, perhaps three, you can hear your own pulse beat, and then with a roar the tido rises again. When a troop train comes into the station canteen workers gird up their loins and make ready for the fray. The door slides back with a crash and in the men pour— fresh from the trenches perhaps, mud-stained, indescribably dirty, weary yet ready for anything, their pay in good five-franc notes in their pockets. How they shout ! Five, six, seven deep round the counter and more crowding in. "Un nickel" " Trois tickes I " "Sept tickgs I" A clamour of voices, a forest of snatching hands. It is the great moment of the day. Spread temptingly in view are madeleines, thorax-a-la-creme, brioches, and slices of English plum cake.
" It is I who will pay." A little party hovers over the cakes. " Qu'est-ce-gue to Fends 9" " For me, I will take a madeleine. Non, non, une brioche." " What is that ? Ploom eak' Ah, mail c'est bon go." So they discuss and ponder regardless of the surging throng that elbows and jostles and swirls impatiently about them. And then the all-important question of a drink. " A coffee, how much ? Two sous ? But it isn't dear, that." " Mai, je prends /den an chocolat." Choice may be made and remade a dozen times before the final order is given and the never-failing ceremony, the ",1 votes.," or " Bonne chance!" or "Bonne sante I" is muttered as bowls are clinked together and the toast is drunk. "Bien chaud," they would plead last winter when even the eggs in the canteen froze, and I shall not readily forget the fair-haired little Lieutenant who strayed in one bitter night and when he had been given his coffee ejaculated : " But how good it is. The first hot drink I have had for fourteen days." " From Verdun, Monsieur ? " " Yes, from Vaux- front-line trenches," ho replied as he held the bowl out to be re- filled. And as I complimented him on the splendid victory which France was even still celebrating I thought of two men who had been in the canteen an evening or two before. Small, thin, dark, wiry- looking creatures they were, one with a deep murderous scar across his face, and both wearing the much-coveted fourragere—the cord of honour given to regiments for exceptional gallantry in the field. They were just out of hospital, they told me, and going back to the front. Yes, they had been in the Vaux battle ; it is the Zouaves who are always in the place of greatest danger. " Thoy know us," the scarred man said without a touch of pride—he was merely stating a fact—" and when the impossible thing is to be done they ask us to do it. For the Zouaves have no fear. If they see Death waiting for them, they march straight up to it They care as little for it as they would for that "—he held up his glass of lemonade. " For that is the " THERE will be a meeting of the Concert Party in the Forward Distributing Station on Wednesday at 6 gm. Any one wishing to join up, please attend and bring their songs with them." honour of the regiment. Death 2" he shrutered. " One will die, So ran the notice on the ship's board. In consequence bags hurriedly
sans doute. At Verdun, on the Somme, n'importe- My eopain (pal) has been wounded twice. And I ? I had two brothers ; they are both in your cemetery here. Yes, killed at Verdun, Mad'm'zelle. I was wounded. Some day I suppose that we, now aussi " . . . Again he shrugged. " Will you give me another lemonade ? "
But they are not all like that, though fatalism lurks under nearly every uniform. There are many who even after three years of war can still be gay. " Voila, use jolie petite brune. Pa-a-g." So two worthies, catching sight of a decorative worker engaged prosaically enough at the moment in selling sausage. And away they went ; wherefore, being intent upon my ow,; affairs, I lest sight of them.
But without regret, for a tall, blue-eyed, gallant-looking thing was holding out a torn and bleeding hand for his coffee. " Monsieur has out himself ? " It was a stupid question, but he only laughed. Yes f He had been taken to Camp Z with his company, but the straw was so full of petiles Was he and his comrade had scrambled over the barbed wire and escaped. Ho would spend the night in the station.
" If Mademoiselle would be so kind as to bind it up ? " He sur- veyed his dripping hand ruefully. Perhaps Mademoiselle should have given him over to the gendarmes, but an unwilling acquaintance with the voracity and agility of certain French petites bgtes inclined her to mercy, lint, and boracie. He oame back later on and drank seven bowls of coffee ; but the record, thirty-seven, was held by a sailor, a searchlight manipulator, who drank soup and coffee alter- nately with a sang-froid that was sheerly stupefying.
Strange, picturesque, arrestingly unexpected are the types one sees in a canteen. Now it is a man with the face of a mystic, a poet, a dreamer, who clinks bowls with a heavy, coarse, brutal-looking butcher. What chance had brought so incongruously assorted a pair together ? Again a tall commanding creature an like the portraits of Napoleon he took our breath away, and then a boy of ten or twelve, a refugee, separated from his family in the awful hours of flight and found wandering in the woods by the soldiers who bad adopted him.
He lived in the trenches sharing their food, their dangers and dis- comforts. His companions, one an elderly man, the other young with a sensitive, delicately out face, took immense care of him, and in his little uniform he swaggered it as bravely as any polls of them alL But perhaps the most poignant memory is that of the pallid, nervous wreck who prowled restlessly up and down like a panther in its cage. His home was in the invaded district; his friends, his rela- tives prisoners in the hands of the Germans. In all Franco he stood absolutely alone. He had been eighteen months in the trenches, refusing his permission because, away from his comrades, he could not bear the intolerable loneliness. His relatives—were they alive or dead ? He knew nothing. Heart-sick and utterly weary of the war, his nerve shattered, there was tragedy in his every word, his every gesture ; the shadow of suicide or ment.d disaster fell close behind. " You should have a marraine (godmother)," advised a neighbour, knowing that many a friendless soldier's life has been brightened and made endurable by kindly women, often unknown, who write to them, send them gifts, and take an interest in their wel- fare. A marraine is indeed a priceless possession. "You are English ?
And my marraine also. Regardez, Mademoiselle," and a photograph was proudly produced—a girl in evening dress, a name scribbled underneath. " You will read her letter ? " But !knew that Miss S. of Liverpool had not written that letter for English eyes. " When I have a permission I am going to see her. Where le this Liverpool ? " He stumbled badly over the name. " You know it ?"
And so the crowd shifts and changes, and men pass unceasingly through the room. Human nature is there in all its frankest nakedness, a thousand qualities, a thousand shades of character weaving vivid, entrancing designs upon the web of life. But standing out above all others is the never-failing courtesy of most of the men. " Ceat pour Cezuvre," and shamefacedly a few sous are thrust across the counter. No need to ask if they appreciate the generosity that built the canteen in that wind-swept
station yard. And yet there were those who prophesied disaster. "Yon will not have an unbroken bowl, cup, glass, or chair in a week," a General said warningly. Yet the canteen furniture is intact, union the bombs which blew the windows out recently have damaged it. And if any doubt of the men's appreciation bad lingered in our minds, it was dispelled for ever by the characteristically French praise of a friend who lived in the town. "C'eat parfait," she cried when she visited us. " But what a pity you did not think of
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