Joffre and the others who directed the machine must know more than the mechanics of staff-control.  They must know the character of the man-material in the machine.  It was their duty as real Frenchmen to understand Frenchmen, their verve, their restlessness for the offensive, their individualism, their democratic intelligence, the value of their elation, the drawback of their tendency to depression and to think for themselves.  Indeed, the leader must counteract the faults of his people and make the most of their virtues.

Thus, we had a French army’s historical part reversed:  a French army falling back and concentrating on the Marne to receive the enemy blow.  Equally alive to German racial traits, the German Staff had organized in their mass offensive the elan which means fast marching and hard blows.  So, we found the supposedly excitable French digging in to receive the onslaught of the supposedly phlegmatic German.  When the time came for the charge—­ah, you can always depend on a Frenchman to charge!

Those reserves were pawns on a chessboard.  They appeared like it; one thought that they realized it.  Their individual intelligence and democracy had reasoned out the value of obedience and homogeneity, rather than accepted it as the dictum of any war lord.  Difficult to think that ’each one had left a vacancy at a family board; difficult to think that all were not automatons in a process of endless routine of war; but not difficult to learn that they were Frenchmen once we had thrown our bombs in the midst of the group.

Of old, one knew the wants of soldiers.  One needed no hint of what was welcome at the front.  Never at any front were there enough newspapers or tobacco.  Men smoke twice as much as usual in the strain of waiting for action; men who do not use tobacco at all get the habit.  Ask the G.A.R. men who fought in our great war if this is not true.  Then, too, when your country is at war, when back at home hands stretch out for every fresh edition and you at the front know only what happens in your alley, think what a newspaper from Paris means out on the battle-line seventy miles from Paris!  So I had brought a bundle of newspapers and many packets of cigarettes.

Monsieur, the sensation is beyond even the French language to express—­the sensation of sitting down by the roadside with this morning’s edition and the first cigarette for twenty-four hours.

“C’est epatant!  C’est chic, ca!  C’est magnifique!  Alors, nom de Dieu!  Tiens!  Helas!  Voila!  Merci, mille remerciments!”—­it was an army of Frenchmen with ready words, quick, telling gestures, pouring out their volume of thanks as the car sped by and we tossed out our newspapers at intervals, so that all should have a look.

An Echo de Paris that fell into the road was the centre of a flag-rush, which included an officer.  Most un-military—­an officer scrambling at the same time as his men!  In the name of the Kaiser, what discipline!