LINES OF COMMUNICATION

annals of home, that for millions of creatures are the
worth of life itself.

Concert Party
Somewhere in France. . . „ An old provincial
theatre, its proscenium held up by full-breasted
caryatids draped in cloth of gold: a red and gold
curtain painted into artificial folds and mock tassels.
. . . Filling the auditorium twelve hundred British
soldiers—and I, trying to analyse their pleasure.
More than anything they loved to sing a chorus,
and they had an uncanny, collective talent for it.
Ah air sung over once was theirs for ever and they
were immediately capable of taking up the refrain.
Quite often they indulged in two-part harmony.
Nobody had asked them to do it. The two choirs
were formed at once and instinctively. They never
shouted, unless perhaps on some given note for
comic effect. They were equally capable of a
pianissimo if the words demanded it. Just before,
the twelve hundred had been whistling an
accompaniment to a dance turn: and they had
followed the dancer attentively and taken care that
the accentuated note should coincide with the fall of
his feet: no orchestra leader could have been more
adroit. It was a surprising thing, this spontaneous
discipline of theirs: it is one of the strengths of their
race.
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