" is his
great mother, with the tenderness of motherhood, the authority of
motherhood, the sanctity of motherhood, as to a Catholic the Blessed
Virgin is the mother of his soul. Perhaps as one of her children he has
been hardly dealt with, has starved and struggled and received many
whippings, but he does not lose his mother-love. The thought of
outrageous hands plucking at her garments, of hostile feet trampling
upon her, of foul attempts upon her liberty and honour, stirs him to
just that madness he would feel if his individual mother, out of whose
womb he came, were threatened in the same way. He does not like
death--he dreads the thought of it--but without questioning his soul he
springs forward to save this mother-country of his and dies upon her
bosom with a cry of "Vive la France!"

2

The French soldier, whatever his coarseness or his delicacy, needs
feminine consolation, and all his ideals and his yearnings and his self-
pity are intimately associated with the love of women, and especially
of one woman--his mother. When Napoleon, in the island of St.
Helena, used to talk about the glories of his victorious years, and then
brooded over the tragedy of his overthrow so that all his soul was
clouded with despair, he used to rouse himself after the silence which
followed those hours of self-analysis and say, "Let us talk about
women--and love." Always it is the feminine spirit in which a
Frenchman bathes his wounds. One small incident I saw a year or
two ago gave me the clue to this quality in the French character. It
was when Vedrines, the famous airman, was beaten by only a few
minutes in the flight round England. Capitaine Conneau--"Beaumont,"
as he called himself--had outraced his rival and waited, with French
gallantry, to shake the hand of the adversary he had defeated on
untiring wings. A great crowd of smart men and women waited also at
Brooklands to cheer the second in the race, who in England is always
more popular than the prize-winner. But when Vedrines came to earth
out of a blue sky he was savage and bitter. The loss of the prize-
money was a great tragedy to this mechanic who had staked all his
ambition on the flight. He shouted out harsh words to those who
came to cheer him, and shook them off violently when they tried to
clap him on the back. He was savagely angry. Then suddenly
something seemed to break in his spirit, and his face quivered.

"Is there any woman to embrace me?" he asked. Out