“ No doubt the mass became infected with the peasant spirit, for peasants formed the bulk of the army, especially when the townsman became the munition-worker. The peasant's mind is both childlike and suspicious, slow to anger, secretive, inclined to deep reflection. He attaches himself slowly, and only after long proof, to those who win his reluctant confidence, and deeply tenacious are his purposes. He will defend his land to the death; he loves it as he loves liberty. He insists on his independence as he insists upon equality, and only upon that principle will he submit to discipline. ”

“ The British trench newspapers have also their particular charm—intermingling Tommy's robust cheerfulness with the shy pathos of homesick islanders, but printed on fine paper, in good type, they lack a little the winsome appeal of those tiny hand-written sheets, sometimes no bigger than a sheet of foolscap, that are produced in the very atmosphere of war, and which are nearly always dainty, and represent in some subtle way the aroma of France: the wit and tenderness, the heroism, the grand virtues of the fighting man, and yet his simplicity of soul. ”

“ To the armed barbarity of science the French soldier opposed his chest, and barbarism was swept back. That is the first lesson of the war of millions. In spite of all the fearful war machines—the huge guns, the gas, the liquid fire, engines of destruction before which man is as puny as a fly—in spite, too, of the impersonal strategy that moves regiments as pieces in a game of chess and seems to take no stock of the little soul of a man, yet, after all, it is the man that counts. ”

“ The Peace of the future is to the strong, to the country that is alive to the menace of war, to the nation constantly vigilant, to a people standing to arms. France, with her woman's soul, clung to a belief in civilisation that should make war unthinkable. But the nations that emerge from this war will have lost their illusions; they will have grown old and wise, and perhaps a little hard. Yet, at least, they will have learnt to face facts; they will not cry Peace when there is no peace. No, the policy of the nations will be directed by hard facts ”

“ When the Great War broke out Gouraud hastened from Morocco to the east of France, where he led Colonial troops in unexampled feats of bravery. He was shot in the shoulder, but bullets cannot stop such a man; he seems to bear a charmed life as he passes heedlessly amidst a storm of flying, shrieking metal. His heroic soul is unmoved by the Inferno of the battle. Even the worst inventions of the devil are powerless against this perfect knight, dressed in the invincible and shining armour of his faith and patriotism. ”

“ One of the prettiest things is to go into a French hospital and see the semi-convalescents at work upon ingenious and charming little objects wherein they show their taste and inexhaustible ingenuity. They are never at a loss, these sons of France: a cunningly carved flower, an amusing caricature, a doll with articulated limbs, dainty little baskets—all these bear witness to the inherent culture and good taste that are theirs by right of birth, in virtue of having been born on the fruitful soil of France. ”

“ How often was the plaint heard in France, where this war of "wait and see," this terrible game of patience, racked the nerves not only of the soldiers in the trenches, but of the multitudes who scanned the morning news in the hope of some startling manoeuvre and stunning victory which should end the hideous nightmare of trench warfare. Had Napoleon and his like passed, then, for ever? Could France never produce his peer? A man who would rise above all difficulties; who would drag guns over the snows in hollowed-out tree-trunks; who would arrive where no man had arrived ”

“ For amidst the awful wreck of war—the sufferings it entails, its thousand miseries, the break-up of the home, the desolation of hearths, and the abominations practised upon civilians by the drunken or cynical soldiers of the Kaiser—there are incidents, as great and as sublime as ever immortalised the saints and martyrs dying for their religion, suffering nameless tortures that, in their quivering flesh, they might represent, for ever, the sustaining power of God. ”

“ And the women, who Joffre says, are sublime, give him stoically their husbands and sons, rivalling in courage those who lay down their lives. And Joffre, by a mysterious predestination, became the instrument of that sacrifice, limitless during the war. And he never called in vain, for, at his first demand, up rose valiant youth ready and joyous to die for the sweet sake of France. He seems to have the art of communicating that secret vibration of the soul, which moves crowds, without so much as opening his lips. ”

“ Throughout the first stages of the war, the British Government, instead of leading public opinion, was driven by it. But in the eyes of a foreign nation, a country, unfortunately, has only the prestige of its Government, and the French, chafing against our slowness to adopt compulsion, little knew that John Bull himself was fighting, through a maze of lawyers' arguments, for that very principle. The farm labourer who, at the beginning of things, asked, "Why can't they treat us all alike?" had his finger upon the pulse of the nation while the politicians hesitated and gambled with time. ”

“ This generation has fought, has given its life with unheard-of prodigality that the new generation may not have to fight. It has purchased freedom at the terrible price of blood—freedom from the slavery of Germany. No. De Musset's picture is no longer true, but it is doubtless this portrait of a puny, bloodless, spiritless France which impressed itself, all the more vividly because of the splendour of the word-painting, upon the foreign observer, and it was perhaps these students of French history who moulded English opinion. ”

“ The Great War awakened the old vehemence of the race, which first revealed its astounding power at the battle of Valmy, where the shoeless hosts of the Revolution shook the proudest might of Prussia. That was the birth of the National Army, which, a century and a quarter later, was to come to such extraordinary development. The nation coalesced in 1792 against the foreign tyrant, but that union lacked the complete union of 1914, though it made up in intensity of spirit what it needed in numbers. The Revolution fought for liberty against a caste system ”

“ You have supported all with a valour, a firmness and endurance that words are powerless to glorify as they deserve. Comrades, the General-in-Chief asked you in the name of the patrie to do more than your duty; you have responded beyond what seemed to be possible. Thanks to you, victory has crowned our standards. Now that you know its glorious satisfaction, you will allow it no longer to escape you. As for myself if I have done anything worthy, I have been recompensed by the greatest honour which could have befallen me in my long career, that of commanding men like you. ”

“ How has the "poilu" become inspired by the highest military courage, and for weeks and weeks, as at Verdun, sustained the most devastating bombardment? Ah! that is the secret of this war, that is the secret of the French temperament, that secluded soul, which is not always what it seems to be. It ever carries in it the seeds and possibilities of greatness: seeds that lay dormant until this war germinated them and they developed into the glorious flower of achievement. In an instant this quick and imaginative people awoke to the necessities of the war ”

“ The "poilu" is peculiarly French in the mood and manner of his life, in his apparent slackness, in the speed with which he braces up at the proper moment, his disgust and objection to mere unintelligent parade, his amused disdain of the "panache," his admiration for and whole-hearted devotion to a man capable of understanding and drawing him out, able to appeal to the particular form of his patriotism, and to fire him with a holy zeal for a holy cause—to a man, in fact, who combines a species of apostolic fervour, a winsomeness and appeal, with the sterling qualities of a real leader of men. ”

“ For an idea, it has been said, he is ever ready to shoulder a rifle behind a barricade. And when that idea is the country, with patriotism leaping high, his frondeur spirit is capable of all. Centuries have not dimmed its ardent inflammability, and each successive phase in history renews his high susceptibility, until one feels that the Great War, instead of exhausting the fruitful soil of France, has enriched it with new virtues and a new potentiality. Rifles have spoken again from the barricades, but this time the nation is ranged on one side of it and the invader on the other. ”

“ She has only one business, that of fighting: her men are all mobilised. And behind them stand the old, the young, the women and children, waiting their turn, should that turn come. And if France ever lies under the German heel, at least of the French people there will be none left to weep. That is the spirit animating the army of Joffre, that army whose exploits must have impressed even the most unimpressionable by their continued splendour. Never was finer heroism displayed than theirs. ”

“ The soldier, in the light of Joffre's humanity, understood delay; he became reconciled to the monotony of trench life, for a forward move, he knew, would cost limitless lives. No, it was better for the war to drag on at this slow game of "nibbling" the enemy than to allow a generation of young lives to be offered to the insatiable god. France could not afford to be lavish with the blood of her children, since the future of the race was as paramount as the fortune of the war. ”

“ The unchanging spirit, then, the bull-dog tenacity, that tremendous grip that never lets go—these British qualities blend and render powerful the Latin temperament, with its quickness of comprehension and adaptability. Slow to see a new fact, still slower to excite himself, John Bull is the ideal character to play the waiting game, that game of exhaustion of the war. The more wonderful, then, in the eyes of the French that he should have made so prodigious a military effort. ”

“ Seemingly in the sombre monotony of modern warfare there could arise no glorious exploit, and yet the trenches were frequently the unlikely frame of the most palpitating and stupendous defiance of man's nervous system. For the weak envelope triumphed by the grace of the soul; and man, though his teeth chattered by the mere brutal concussion of monstrous weapons, yet showed in his moral resistance a wealth and splendour of achievement unknown to the old and picturesque days. ”