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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 of the crowd came a pretty Frenchwoman and, understanding the man, though she had not met him before, she held out her arms to him and raised her face.

“Allons-donc, mon vieux!” she said.  The man put his arms about her and kissed her, while tears streamed down his face, covered in sweat and dust.  He was comforted, like a boy who had hurt himself, in his mother’s arms.  It was a queer little episode—­utterly impossible in the imagination of an Englishman—­but a natural thing in France.

So when a Frenchman lies dying, almost unconscious before the last breath, it is always a woman’s name that he cries out, or whispers, though not always the name of his wife or mistress.  One word is heard again and again in the hospital wards, where the poilus lie, those bearded fellows, so strong when they went out to the war, but now so weak and helpless before death.

“Maman!  Maman!”

It is to the bosom of motherhood that the spirit of the Frenchman goes in that last hour.

“Oh, my dear little mamma,” writes a young lieutenant of artillery, “it would be nice to be in my own room again, where your picture hangs over my bed looking down on the white pillows upon which you used to make the sign of the Cross before I went to sleep.  I often try to dream myself into that bedroom again, but the cold is too intense for dreams, and another shell comes shrieking overhead.  War is nothing but misery, after all.”