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” 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!”