and out of all these friendships and revelations
of soul the character of the soldiers of France stands before my mind
in heroic colours.

Individually, of course, the qualities of these men differ as one man
from another in any nation or class. I have seen the neurasthenic,
quivering with agony in his distress of imaginary terrors, and the man
with steady nerves, who can turn a deaf ear to the close roar of guns
and eat a hunk of bread-and-cheese with an unspoilt appetite within a
yard or two of death; I have seen the temperament of the aristocrat
and the snob in the same carriage with the sons of the soil and the
factory whose coarse speech and easy-going manners jarred upon
his daintiness. War does not entirely annihilate all distinctions of caste
even in France, where Equality is a good word, and it does not blend
all intellectual and moral qualities into one type of character, in spite
of the discipline of compulsory service and the chemical processes
which mix flesh and blood together in the crucible of a battlefield. So it
is impossible to write of the French soldier as a single figure, or to
make large generalizations about the armies of France. The coward
skulks by the side of the war. The priestly spirit in the ranks is
outraged by the obscenities of the debauchee.

Yet out of those great masses of men who have fought for France
there does emerge a certain definite character overwhelming the
details of their individual differences, and I have seen certain qualities
of temperament which belong to the majority of them, as essential
elements of the national spirit of France. The quality of their
patriotism, for example, shines very clear above all these millions of
men who have abandoned all their small self-interests for the supreme
purpose of defending France. England has her patriotism--we
give a great proof of it in blood--but it is not like that of France, not
so religious in its sentiment, not so passionate in its convictions, not
so feminine a thing. To most of these French soldiers, indeed to all
that I have talked with, the love of France is like the faith of a devout
Catholic in his church. It is not to be argued about. It holds the very
truth of life. It enshrines all the beauty of French ideals, all the rich
colour of imagination, all the poetry and music that has thrilled
through France since the beginning of our civilization, all her agonies
and tears. To the commonest soldier of France, "La Patrie