PARIS AND PICARDY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 231, 18 June 1918, Page 6

PARIS AND PICARDY

"KOSES ARE NOT .BLOOMING IN PICAIiDY." , Writing of a leave visit to Paris, a Wellington soldier with a turn for humour for which he is rather noted in these parts, 'described a visit to the French Senate:—"The President, dear old man, was out, but three of us were shown over the Senate. The deputy who was showing us round bowled up to us, and said: 'Bon jour, Americaine!'' This was before the Americans were in the line, so I replied sweetly in my best French (which is something fierce) that wo were not 'les Americaines' butreal 'soldats.* This seemed to tickle the old chap immensely. He took us all over the place, and finished up at the tomb of the lato Mr. Bonaparte. We had the giddy tact not to tell him that we had visited it three times already, hut 'thused' over everything ho showed us. He was a grand old party. That's how we got into the President's own chambcr. We sat in Victo Hugo's seat—which still has his name on a brass plate. . . . But all that happened some time ago. Since then we have been romping all over the landscape wherever good 'old 'High Command' see fit to stop a gap. That song, 1 'Hoses of Picardy,' will oring back memories for many a loiijj day, for many of our boys have paid the price in old Pic- ! ardy; but there were 110 giddy roses ' blooming there then. Fritz was surg- . ing over the country at a critical time ' when the old Division of Diggers was i thrown in to steady things up, and the 'Dinks' ami Cantcrburys got into those 1 Pritzies, and gave them a terriblo shock. ' The papers said it was one of tho best i stunts of the last forty-eight hours; my 1 private opinion is that it was tho best stunt of a very much longer period, i After they had stopped him, old Fritz ' waited till he could got reinforcements, I and then came 011 again, but got a vi- 1 cious handling."