One night, strolling outside my own billet and wandering down the lane a way, I heard the sound of singing coming from a big brick barn on the roadside. I stood close under the blank wall at the back of the building, and listened. The men were singing “ Auld Lang Syne ” to the accompaniment of a concertina and a mouth-organ. They were taking parts, and the old tune⁠—so strange to hear out in a village of France, in the war zone⁠—sounded very well, with deep-throated harmonies. Presently the concertina changed its tune, and the men of the New Army sang “ God Save the King .” I heard it sung a thousand times or more on royal festivals and tours, but listening to it then from that dark old barn in Flanders, where a number of “ K. ’s men” lay on the straw a night or two away from the ordeal of advanced trenches, in which they had to take their turn, I heard it with more emotion than ever before. In that anthem, chanted by these boys in the darkness, was the spirit of England. If I had been king, like that Harry who wandered round the camp of Agincourt, where his men lay sleeping, I should have been glad to stand and listen outside that barn and hear those words: