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308 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
full of humour, anecdote and song. An actor with the Iron
Cross is probably something out of the ordinary, but what
is there that is not striking on this endless German front of
warriors ! Perhaps Cleving’s greatest charm is his genius for
accompanying himself on the guitar after the fashion of our
own Sven Scholander. The two troubadours were to have
started out on a singing tour together this autumn. But
Cleving was destined to listen to a very different kind of
music—that of the shrapnel shells, and it was a very different
kind of theatre that he was about to perform in. He did not
grumble at the change. Before he had scattered joy and
merriment around him with his acting and his song, now he
also bore the glory which surrounds a warrior who has fought
with honour and bravery for his country.
Yet the war had not quite been able to part him from his
guitar. He had brought it with him and presently he settled
down on a chair in our little circle and all became silent.
French chansons, German soldier ditties of long ago, winter
songs from 1530 and " Die Goldene Kugel " with music by
himself, all succeeded one another but too rapidly. To me he
seemed to keep the best to the end, when he surprised me with
a selection from our own Swedish lyrical poet Bellman.
But Cleving could sing of Mandalay, too, choosing a far
prettier and more inspiriting tune than the English one, and
with other words than Kipling’s. " But I must have a piano
accompaniment for this," he declared. The Duke pressed a
button and an orderly entered. " Bring in a piano," he said,
" Ja wohl, Hoheit." In a quarter of an hour the doors were
thrown open and four gigantic soldiers strode in, carrying a
piano. " W^here have they found that, I wonder ? " I asked.
" Oh, I suppose they’ve conjured it forth from some house in
the neighbourhood," the Duke answered. And so we got the
song about Mandalay, and indescribably wistful and dreamy
it sounded with its alluring refrain of " Bei den alien Tempel-
toren " {" By the old temple gate ").
And so our evening passed away. Time crept by imper-
ceptibly, the hour of midnight chimed from the clock-tower
and it was nearly two when for the last time we intoned the
thundering refrain " Trarallalalala " from one of Cleving’s
Swedish adaptations.
What did they think of it, I wonder, those wretched people
tossing restlessly on their beds, though doubtless they had
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