"World without end. Amen," said one of the British soldiers with some
irrelevance as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered-he says
he cannot think why or wherefore--a queer vegetarian restaurant in
London where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets
made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates
in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue,
with the motto, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius_--May St. George be a
present help to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and
other useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey
advancing mass--300 yards away--he uttered the pious vegetarian
motto. He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had
to clout him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out
as he did so that the King's ammunition cost money and was not lightly
to be wasted in drilling funny patterns into dead Germans.
For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something
between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The
roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead
of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a
thunder-peal crying, "Array, array, array!"
His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him,
as it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons.
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