at Gallic humor which jokes at danger,
takes liberities with it.

What pride! What sense of honor! Whereas the German officer, posted
behind his men, drives them forward like a flock of sheep, revolver in
his hand and insults on his lips, we, on our side, hear nothing but
those beautiful, those radiant words: "Forward! For your country!"--the
call of the French officer to his children, whom he impels forward by
giving them the example, by plunging under fire first, before all of
them, at their head.

*The Password: "Smile!"*

And--supreme adornment of all--with what grace they deck their
gallantry! A few seconds before being killed by an exploding shell, Col.
Doury, ordered to resist to the last gasp, replies: "All right! We will
resist. And now, boys, here is the password: Smile!" It is like a flower
thrown on the scientific brutality of modern war, that memory of the
days when men went to war with lace on their sleeves. There we recognize
the French soldier such as we have always known him through fifteen
centuries of the history of France.

But now we look upon him in a form of which we did not suspect the
existence, the form in which he has just revealed himself to us.

To go forward is all very well; but to fall back in good order, to
understand that a retreat may be a masterpiece of strategy, to find in
himself that other kind of courage which consists in not getting
discouraged, to be able to wait without getting demoralized, to preserve
unshaken the certainty of the final outcome--in these things lies a
virtue which we did not know we possessed: the virtue of patience. It
won us our victory of the Marne. One man is its personification today,
that great chief, wise and prudent, who spares his men, who makes up his
mind not to give battle except in his own time on his own ground, that
chief toward whom at this moment the calm and confident eyes of the
entire country are turned.

To carry a position by assault is one thing. But to stand impassive in a
rain of shot, amid exploding shells, amid infernal din and blinding
smoke; to fire at an invisible enemy, to dispute foot by foot ground
covered with traps, to retake the same village ten times, to burrow into
the soil and crouch there, to watch day after day for the moment when
the beast at bay ventures from his lair--where have we acquired the
phlegmatic coolness for such things? Has it come from the proximity of
our English allies? It is in the English rep