As soon as the battalion marches back from the trenches to the village in the first light of the morning, everyone turns his mind to methods which will help the few days of rest to pass as pleasantly as war and the limited amusements afforded by two estaminets and a row of cottages will permit.

"Chacun son goÛt." As he tramps along the street, B Company Sergeant-Major challenges Corporal Rogers to a boxing match on the morrow; Second Lieutenant White, who is new to war, sits in his billet and, by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, traces the distance to the nearest town on the off chance that he will get leave to visit it; the doctor demands of his new landlady, in the most execrable French, where he can find a field suitable for "le football"; and Private Wilson, as he "dosses down" on the floor, suggests sleepily to Private Jones that he will be thirsty in the afternoon and that Private Jones has been owing him a drink since that day in Ouderdom three weeks ago.

Besides such methods of passing the time, there are baths to be had in the great brewery vats of the village, there is an inter-company hockey tournament to be played with a Tickler's jam tin in lieu of a ball, and, best of all, there is the "sing-song."

Be it in a trench, or in a barn, or out in the open fields where the battalion lies bivouacked under rows of waterproof sheets strung up as inadequate tents, the sing-song is sure of success, and a man with a voice like a mowing machine will receive as good a reception as would Caruso or Melba at Covent Garden. There is a French Territorial regiment which has a notice up at the entrance of its "music hall"—"EntrÉe pour Messieurs les Poilus. Prix un sourire." Admission a smile! There is never a man turned away from its doors, for where is the "poilu" or where is the "Tommy" who is not always ready with a smile and a laugh and a song?

There are little incidents in life that engrave themselves deep in the memory. Of all the sing-songs I have attended, there is one that is still vivid—the brush of time has washed away the outlines and edges of the others.

We were billeted, I remember, in Eliza's farm—Eliza, for the benefit of those who do not know her, is fair, fat, fifty, and Flemish; a lady who shakes everyone in the farm into wakefulness at five o'clock each morning by the simple process of stepping out of bed—when the Captain decided that we wanted "taking out of ourselves." "We'll have a sing-song," he announced.

So the Company Sergeant-Major was called in to make arrangements, and at eight o'clock that evening we wandered into the Orchestra Stalls. The concert hall was a large barn with a double door in the middle which had been opened wide to allow the admittance of a cart, which was placed in the entrance to act as a stage. All around the high barn, and perched precariously on the beams, were the men, while we of the Orchestra Stalls were accommodated on chairs placed near the stage. Behind the cart was a background consisting of Eliza and her numerous gentlemen friends, her daughter, an old lady aged roughly a hundred, and a cow that had no right to be there at all, but had wandered in from the nearest field to see the show. An orchestral accompaniment was kept up, even during the saddest recitation, by dozens of little pigs that scrambled about in the farmyard and under the stage. And beyond the farm swayed the tall poplars that stood along the road which led straight away into the distance, whence came sudden flashes of light and the long, dull rumble of the guns.

Of the programme itself, I have but the vaguest recollection, for the programmes are the least interesting part of these performances. The first item, I remember, was a dreadful sentimental song by Private Higgs which accident converted from comparative failure into howling success. Just as he was rendering the most affecting passage, Private Higgs stepped back too far, the cart—of the two-wheeled variety—overbalanced, and the sad singer was dropped down amongst the little pigs below, to the great joy of the crowd.

Then came a Cockney humorist, who, in times of peace, was the owner of a fried fish and chip barrow in that home of low comedians—the East End. After him appeared Sergeant Andrews, disguised in one of Eliza's discarded skirts, with a wisp of straw on his head to represent a lady's hair. Some vulgar song he sang in a shrill, falsetto voice that caused great dismay among the pigs, as yet unused to the vagaries of the British soldier.

After the interval, during which the audience en masse made a pilgrimage to Eliza's back door to buy beer at a penny a glass, there came the usual mixture of the vulgar and the sentimental, for nothing on earth is more sentimental than a soldier. There was the inevitable "Beautiful Picture in a Beautiful Golden Frame," and a recitation in Yiddish which was well applauded simply because no man had any idea what it was about. The Sergeant-Major gave a very creditable rendering of "Loch Lomond" in a voice that would terrify a recruit, and we finished up the evening with a song requesting a certain naughty boy to hold out his hand, which was shouted by everyone with so much vigour that one wondered how it was the men could still sing "God save the King" when the time came.

And far into the night, when the farmyard lay still and ghostly, and the pigs had gone off to bed, we still sat and talked in the "Officers' Mess," and recalled jokes of George Robey and Harry Tate, or hummed over the tunes we had heard at the last Queen's Hall concert. As the Captain had said, we wanted "taking out of ourselves," and it had just needed an impromptu concert in an old Flemish barn to do it.