it had been the mess of a German headquarters and this gave Fortune his cue, and he entertained us with some caricatures of German generals and officers, amazingly comic. He drank his soup in the style of a German general and ate his potato pie as a German Intelligence officer who had once been a professor of psychology at Heidelberg.
The little American doctor, "Daddy" Small as we called him, had been made an honorary member of the mess, and he smiled at Fortune through his spectacles with an air of delighted surprise that such things should be.
"You English," he said in his solemn way, "are the most baffling people in the world. I have been studying you since I came to France, and all my preconceived ideas have been knocked on the head. We Americans think you are a hard, arrogant, selfish people, without humour or sympathy, made in set moulds, turned out as types from your University and public schools. That is all wrong. I am beginning to see that you are more human, more various, more whimsical than any race in the world. You decline to take life seriously. You won't take even death seriously. This war—you make a joke of it. The Germans—you kill them in great numbers, but you have a secret liking for them. Fortune's caricatures are very comical—but not unkind. I believe Fortune is a pro-German. You cannot laugh at the people you hate. I believe England will forgive Germany quicker than any other nation—far quicker than the Americans. France, of course, will never forgive."
"No," said Pierre Nesle, who was at the end of the table. "France will never forgive."
"We are an illogical people," said the Colonel. "It is only logical people who can go on hating. Besides, German music is so good! So good!"
