f
its abbreviated underclothing, for there are English prints which
specialize in those in a more leering way, and they are not widely
popular like the French print. But _La Vie_ is produced by intelligent
men. It is not a heavy lump of stupid or snobbish photographs. It does
not leer. There is nothing clownish and furtive about it. It is the gay
and frank expression of artists whose humour is too broad for the
general; but, as a rule, there is no doubt about the fine quality of
their drawings and the deftness of their wit. That is what makes the
French print so liked by our men.

New York _Life_ proves that, it seems to me. The American periodical is
very popular in France, and the demand for it has now reached London. The
chemise is not its oriflamme. It properly recognizes much else in life.
But its usual survey of the world's affairs has a merry expansiveness
which would make the editorial mind common to London as giddy as grandma
in an aeroplane. It is not written in a walled enclosure of ideas. It is
not darkened and circumscribed by the dusty notions of the clubs. It does
not draw poor people as sub-species of the human. It does not recognize
class distinctions at all, except for comic purposes. It is brighter,
better-informed, bolder, and more humane than anything on this side, and
our men in France find its spirit in accord with theirs. One of the
results of the War will be that they will want something like it when
they come back, though I don't see how they are to get it unless it is
imported, or unless they emigrate to a country where to feel that way
about things is normal and not peculiar.

IX. The Marne

AUGUST 3, 1918. The holy angels were at Mons; British soldiers saw them
there. A Russian army was in England in 1914; everybody knew someone who
had seen it. And Joan of Arc, in shining armour, has returned to the aid
of the French. These and even graver symptoms warn us that we may not be
in that state of equanimity which is useful when examining evidence. Only
this week, in the significant absence of the house-dog, a mysterious hand
thrust through my letter-box a document which proved, as only propaganda
may, that this war was thoroughly explored in the Book of Daniel. Why
were we not told so before? Why was Lord Haldane reading Hegel when there
was Daniel? What did we pay him for? And that very same night I stood at
the outer gate with one who asked me why, when there were stacks of jam
in o