Another turn and Soissons was hidden from view by a woodland.  Here we came upon what looked like a leisurely family party of reserves.  The French army, a small section of French army, along a road!  And thus, if one would see the whole it must be in bits along the roads, when not on the firing-line.  They were sprawling in the fields in the genial afternoon sun, looking as if they had no concern except to rest.  Uniforms dusty and faces tanned and bearded told their story of the last month.

The duty of a portion of a force is always to wait on what is being done by the others at the front.  These were waiting near a fork which could take them to the right or the left, as the situation demanded.  At the rear, their supply of small arms ammunition; in front, caissons of shells for a battery speaking from the woods near by; a troop of cavalry drawn up, the men dismounted, ready; and ahead of them more reserves ready; everything ready.

This was where the general wanted the body of men and equipment to be, and here they were.  There were no dragging ends in the rear, so far as I could see; nobody complaining that food or ammunition was not up; no aide looking for somebody who could not be found; no excited staff officer rushing about shouting for somebody to look sharp for somebody had made a mistake.  The thing was unwarlike; it was like a particularly well-thought-out route march.  Yet at the word that company of cavalry might be in the thick of it, at the point where they were wanted; the infantry rushing to the support of the firing-line; the motor transport facing around for withdrawal, if need be.  It was only a little way, indeed, into the zone of death from the rear of that compact column.  Thousands of such compact bodies on many roads, each seemingly a force by itself and each a part of the whole, which could be a dependable whole only when every part was ready, alert, and where it belonged!  Nothing can be left to chance in a battle-line three hundred miles long.  The general must know what to depend on, mile by mile, in his plans.  Millions of human units are grouped in increasingly larger units, harmonized according to set forms.  The most complex of all machines is that of a vast army, which yet must be kept most simple.  No unit acts without regard to the others; every one must know how to do its part.  The parts of the machine are standardized.  One is like the other in training, uniform, and every detail, so that one can replace another.  Oldest of all trades this of war; old experts the French.  What one saw was like manoeuvres.  It must be like manoeuvres or the army would not hold together.  Manoeuvres are to teach armies coherence; war tries out that coherence, which you may not have if someone does not know just what to do; if he is uncertain in his role.  Haste leads to confusion; haste is only for supreme moments.  In order to know how to hasten when the hurry call comes, the mighty organism must move in its routine with the smoothness of a well-rehearsed play.