he armies of France. On my way south I stopped for a night in
Chalons-sur-Marne to dine with him. He was living in a comfortable but
modest house, evidently the residence of a prosperous tradesman. When
I arrived I found the small and rather barely furnished salon filled
with officers of the staff, in uniforms of the beautiful horizon blue
which is the universal dress of the French army. They were clustered
about the marble-topped centre-table, on which, I imagine, the family
Bible used to rest, but which now held the steel base of a
380-centimetre shell, which had fallen in a near-by village that
afternoon. This monster projectile, as large as the largest of those
fired by our coast-defense guns, must have weighed considerably more
than a thousand pounds and doubtless cost the Germans at least a
thousand dollars, yet all the damage it had done was to destroy a
tumble-down and uninhabited cottage, which proves that, save against
permanent fortifications, there is a point where the usefulness of
these abnormally large guns ceases. While we were discussing this
specimen of Bertha Krupp's handicraft, the door opened and General
Gouraud entered the room. Seldom have I seen a more striking figure: a
tall, slender, graceful man, with a long, brown, spade-shaped beard
which did not entirely conceal a mouth both sensitive and firm. But it
was the eyes which attracted and held one's attention: great, lustrous
eyes, as large and tender as a woman's, but which could on occasion, I
fancy, become cold as steel, or angry as lightning. One sleeve of his
tunic hung empty, and he leaned heavily on a cane, for during the
landing at Gallipoli he was terribly wounded by a Turkish shell.
Covering his breast were glittering stars and crosses, which showed
how brilliant had been his services in this and other wars. He is a
remarkable man, this soldier with the beard of a _poilu_ and the eyes
of a poet, and, unless I am greatly mistaken, he is destined to go a
long, long way.

It was the sort of dinner that one marks with a white milestone on the
road of memory. The soldier-servants wore white-cotton gloves and
there were flowers on the table and menus with quaint little military
sketches in the corners. General Gouraud talked in his deep, melodious
voice of other wars in which he had fought, in Annam and Morocco and
Madagascar, and the white-mustached old general of artillery at my
left illustrated, with the aid of the knives and forks, a new