I can readily believe that war as performed by Messieurs our ancestors was quite good fun. You dressed up in feathers and hardware—like something between an Indian game-cock and a tank—and caracoled about the country on a cart-horse, kissing your hand to balconies and making very liberal expenses out of any fat (and unarmed) burgesses that happened along.  
With the first frost you went into winter quarters—i.e. you turned into the most convenient castle and whiled away the dark months roasting chestnuts at a log fire, entertaining the ladies with quips, conundrums and selections on the harpsichord and vying with the jester in the composition of Limericks.
 
The profession of arms in those spacious days was both pleasant and profitable. Nowadays it is neither; it is a dreary mélange of mud, blood, boredom and blue-funk (I speak for myself).
 
Yet even it, miserable calamity that it is (or was), has produced its piquant situations, its high moments; and one manages to squeeze a sly smile out of it all, here and there, now and again.
 
I have heard the skirl of the Argyll and Sutherland battle-pipes in the Borghese Gardens and seen a Highlander dance the sword-dance before applauding Rome. I have seen the love-locks of a matinée idol being trimmed with horse-clippers (weep, O ye flappers of Suburbia!) and a Royal Academician set to whitewash a pig-sty. I have seen American aviators in spurs, Royal Marines a-horse, and a free-born Australian eating rabbit. All these things have I seen.
 
And of high moments I have experienced plenty of late, for it has been my happy lot to be in the front of the hunt that has swept the unspeakable Boche back off a broad strip of France and Belgium, and the memory of the welcome accorded to us, the first British, by the liberated inhabitants will remain with us until the last "Lights Out." The procedure was practically the same throughout.
 
There would come a crackle of wild rifle-fire from the front of a village; then, as we worked round to the flank, a dozen or so blue-cloaked Uhlans would scamper out of the rear and disappear at a non-stop gallop for home. In a second the street would be full of people, emptying out of houses and cellars, pressing about us, shaking hands, kissing us and our horses even, smothering us with flowers, cheering "Vivent les Anglais!", "Vive la France!" clamouring, laughing, crying, mad with joy.
 
Grandmères would appear at attic windows waving calico tricolours (hidden for four long years) while others plastered up tricolour hand-bills—"Hommage à nos Liberateurs," "God's blessing unto Tommy."
 
However, touching and delightful though it all might be, it was not getting on with the war; this embarras des amis was saving the Uhlans' hide.
 
Furthermore, though I can bring myself to bear with a certain amount of embracing from attractive young things, I do not enjoy the salutations of unshorn old men; and when Mayors and Corporations got busy my native modesty rebelled, and I would tear myself loose and, with my steed decorated from ears to croup with flowers, so that I looked more like a peram............