at
so many French soldiers have suffered more acutely than their
English allies. They see the risks of war more vividly, though they
take them with great valour. They are more sensitive to the sights and
sounds of the fighting lines than the average English "Tommy," who
has a tougher temperament and does not allow his mind to brood
over blood and agony. They have the gift, also, of self-analysis and
self-expression, so that they are able to translate their emotions into
vivid words, whereas our own men are taciturn for the most part
about their side of the business and talk objectively, looking
outwards, and not inwards.

5

Some of the letters from French soldiers, scrawled in the squalor of
the trenches by men caked in filth and mud, are human documents in
which they reveal themselves with extraordinary intimacy, and in
which they put the whole truth, not disguising their terror or their
blood-lust in the savage madness of a bayonet charge, or the
heartache which comes to them when they think of the woman they
love, or the queer little emotions and sentiments which come to them
in the grim business of war. They watch the dawn, and in a line or two
put some of its beauty into their letters home. They describe with a
literary skill that comes from strong emotions the gloom and horror of
long nights near the enemy's trenches from which at any moment a
new attack may come. And yet, though they do not hide their
moments of spiritual misery or despair, there is in all these letters the
splendid courage of men who are ready for the last sacrifice and
eager for their chance of honour.

"I send this letter," writes a young Zouave, "as I sit huddled under an
earth-heap at twenty yards from a German trench, less to be envied
than a rabbit in its burrow, because when the hunter is far away it can
come out and feed at pleasure. You who live through the same
agonies, old friend, must learn and rejoice that I have been promoted
adjutant on the night of November 13 on the banks of the Yser. There
were seventy men out of 250--the rest of the company sleep for ever
round that ferryman's house which the papers have made famous...
What moral sufferings I have endured! We have now been brought to
the south of Ypres and continue this depressing life in advanced
trenches. Not a quarter of an hour's respite: shells, shrapnels, bombs
and bullets fall around us continuously. How courage has changed
with this modern war! The hero of ol