There were some undercurrents of emotion in the British army not to be seen on the surface.  There had been private dramas in private drawing-rooms.  Some of the older men had been “churned up,” as they would say, because this sudden war had meant a leave-taking from women, who would be in a deuce of a fix if anything happened to certain captains and certain majors.  Love affairs which had been somewhat complicated were simplified too abruptly by a rapid farewell, and a “God bless you, old girl. ...  I hate to leave you with such ragged ends to the whole business.  But perhaps after all it’s a way out—­for both of us.  Eh?” The war offered a way out for all sorts of men with complicated lives, with debts that had been rather a worry, and with bills of folly that could not be paid at sight, and with skeletons in the cupboard rattling their bones too loudly behind the panels.  Well, it was a case of cut and run.  Between the new life and the old there would be no bridge, across which a woman or a ghost could walk.  War is always a way of escape even though it be through the dark valley of death.

Nothing of this private melodrama was visible among those men who came to France.  When they landed at Boulogne there was no visible expression on faces which have’ been trained to be expressionless.  At Rouen, at Le Mans, at St. Omer, and many other towns in France I watched our British officers and tried to read their character after getting a different point of view among the French troops.  Certainly in their way they were magnificent—­the first gentlemen in the world, the most perfect type of aristocratic manhood.  Their quietude and their coldness struck me as remarkable, because of the great contrast in the character of the people around them.  For the first time I saw the qualities of my own race, with something like a foreigner’s eyes, and realized the strength of our racial character.  It was good to see the physique of these men, with their clear-cut English faces, and their fine easy swagger, utterly unconscious and unaffected, due to having played all manner of games since early boyhood, so that their athletic build was not spoilt by deliberate development.

And I gave homage to them because of the perfect cut and equipment of their uniforms, so neat and simple, and workmanlike for the job of war.  Only Englishmen could look so well in these clothes.  And even in these French towns I saw the influence of English school life and of all our social traditions standing clear-cut against the temperament of another nation with different habits and ideals.  They were confident without any demonstrative sign that they were superior beings destined by God, or the force of fate, to hold the fullest meaning of civilization.  They were splendidly secure in this faith, not making a brag of it, not alluding to it, but taking it for granted, just as they had taken for granted their duty to come out to France and die if that were destined.