“This is my first leave,” he said (but in his own tongue), “since last March. Last year we were let off ten days every three months. Now we get twenty days a year.”

“In 1918,” said I, for something to say, “you’ll probably have no vacation at all.”

“In 1918,” he replied confidently, “I believe we’ll get three hundred and sixty-five days.”

We settled the war in about half an hour. Then he asked me to join him in a Scotch and soda. I was too gentlemanly to refuse. The bar, we ascertained, was closed. But we might find something in the dining-room. We did, but to make it legal we had to order biscuits, alias crackers, with the beverage. We didn’t have to eat them, though. They looked to be in their dotage, like the permanent sandwiches which serve a similar purpose in certain blue-law cities of Les Etats Unis.

We settled the war all over again, and retired, the colonel politely expressing the hope that we would meet for breakfast.