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In those trenches
there were all the ways of speech, all the sentiment of place and
history, all the creeds and local customs and songs of old tradition
which belong to the mixture of our blood wherever it is found about
the world.
The skirl of the Scottish bagpipes was heard through all the years of
war over the Flemish marshlands, and there were Highlanders and
Lowlanders with every dialect over the border. In one line of trenches
the German soldiers listened to part-songs sung in such trained
harmony that it was as if a battalion of opera-singers had come into
the firing-line. The Welshmen spoke their own language. For a time no
officer received his command unless he spoke it as fluently as running
water by Aberystwyth, and even orders were given in this tongue until
a few Saxons, discovered in the ranks, failed to form fours and know
their left hand from their right in Welsh.
The French-Canadians did not need to learn the language of the
peasants in these market towns.


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