With the Serbs in Macedonia

INTO THE BREACH ONCE MORE 107
which time has only served to cement. There
was something about these nobly simple
soldiers, who had given up everything and
never talked about it, who could still smile
though they had been robbed of their country
and their homes and were tortured underneath
by a sickly fear of what might be happening to
their loved ones in Austrian-Bulgarian hands,
that went straight to the British heart. Tommy,
a child himself, loves children, and this was a
race of brave babies— delightful, unexpected,
straight, and transparent, shrewd and simple as
babies are ; something unique and lovable, and
withal strong and ''White " all through — a race
that meant business and was out to kill but
never said so, and grew as glum and dumb as
Tommy
himself when invited to describe their
achievements, or else talked about their friends.
Never before have two nations '*
taken to each
other " as Serb and Briton did in those early
days in Salonica, in spite of the language
difficulty. The medium of communication for
the officers, of course, was French, and it is a
difficult question whether Serbian-French or
British-French is the more atrocious to the
Parisian ear. Both, generally speaking, eliminate
the nasal sounds altogether as too much
bother ; and the Briton says
''
00 ''
and the
Serb ''
ee ''
for the French ''
u,'' and neither