This monstrous war has been your greatest test, straining your moral fibre beyond even the ordeal of those days when your Republican armies fought in rags and tatters on the frontiers and swept across Europe to victories which drained your manhood.  The debacle of 1870 was not your fault, for not all your courage could save you from corruption and treachery, and in this new war you have risen above your frailties with a strength and faith that have wiped out all those memories of failure.  It is good to have made friends among you, to have clasped some of your brown hands, to have walked a little along the roads with you.  Always now the name of France will be like a song in my heart, stirring a thousand memories of valour and fine endurance, and of patience in this senseless business of slaughter, which made you unwilling butchers and victims of a bloody sacrifice.  Bonne chance, soldats de France!

Chapter X The Men In Khaki

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When our little professional army landed on the coast of Prance there was not one in a thousand soldiers who had more than the vaguest idea as to why he was coming to fight the Germans or as to the character of the fighting in which he was to be engaged.  If one asked him “Why are we at war with Germany” this regular soldier would scratch his head, struggle to find a reasonable answer, and mutter something about “them bloody Germans,” and “giving a hand to the Froggies.”  Of international politics, world-problems, Teutonic ambitions, Slav perils, White Papers or Yellow Papers, he knew nothing and cared nothing.  As a professional soldier it was his duty to fight anybody he was told to fight, of whatever colour he might be, or of whatever country.  For some months it had been in his mind that he might have to do a bit of shooting in Ireland, and on the whole he was glad that this enemy was to speak a foreign language.  It made the game seem more as it should be.  What was it Blatchford had said about the Germans?  He couldn’t quite remember the drift of it, except that they had been preparing for years to have a smack at England.  Wanted to capture all our Colonies, and were building ships like blazes.  Of course our Government had been asleep as usual, and didn’t care a damn.  No British Government ever did, as far as he could remember.  Anyhow, the Germans were his enemy, and the French were our friends—­which was queer—­and the British army was going to save Europe again according to its glorious traditions as mentioned more than once by the Colonel.  It had been a fine time before saying good-bye to the wife and kids.  Every man had been a hero to his fellow citizens, who had clapped him on the back and stood free drinks in great style.  “Bring us back some German helmets, Jock!” the girls had shouted out, “And mind your P’s and Q’s with them French hussies.”