witness to the truth of his patriotism than Colonel Patrice
Mahon, known in letters as Art Roe. His novels, which dealt largely
with modern Russian life, in relation with the French army, were
virile and elevated productions, but he was a man of fifty at the time
of his heroic death at the head of his troops, in the battle of
Wisembach (August 22, 1914), and his tone was not that of such young
men as Camille Violand and Marcel Drouet. To read again the "Pingot et
moi" of Art Roe is to return to a book of the utmost sincerity and
valour, but it was published in 1893, and there is no touch of the
splendour of 1914 about it.

A figure which stands midway between the generation of Art Roe and
that of the adolescent comrades of a new Sophocles of whom we shall
presently speak, is Captain E.J. Detanger, who seems to be
transitional, and to share the qualities of both. This name has, even
now, scarcely grown familiar to the eye and ear, but it proves to have
been the real name of Emile Nolly, whose romances of modern life in
the Extreme East had been widely read just before the war. Nolly's
earliest books, "Hien le Maboul" and "La Barque Annamite" (but
particularly the latter), gave promise of a new Pierre Loti or a new
Rudyard Kipling, but totally distinct in manner from both. Detanger
was just thirty-four when the war broke out, and he was one of its
early victims, dying at Blainville-sur-l'Eau on September 5. He
greatly distinguished himself by his personal bravery, and the cross
of the Legion of Honour was pinned to his blood-stained uniform on his
last battle-field. The tribute of a fellow-officer to this devoted man
of letters may be quoted here. It is an example of the sudden and
complete transformation which turned artists into soldiers at the
first sound of the bugle:--

"Emile Nolly proved a magnificent soldier. He had a youthful, blithe,
fervent and resolute soul; he had the soul of a hero completely
prepared to sacrifice himself with joy for his country. After having
served valiantly and brilliantly in Indo-China, and then in Morocco,
it was with a radiant hope that he set out for the frontier of
Lorraine. 'What does the life of any one of us matter?' he said to me
just before he left. 'All that is essential is that France should
live, that she should be victorious.'"

Marcel Drouet, who has just been mentioned, was much younger. He was a
native of the invaded department of the Ardennes, and had not
completed h