Intelligence first, then, has helped France to be what she is; and next, perhaps, one of its corollaries, expression.  The French are the first to laugh at themselves for running to words:  they seem to regard their gift for expression as a weakness, a possible deterrent to action.  The last year has not confirmed that view.  It has rather shown that eloquence is a supplementary weapon.  By “eloquence” I naturally do not mean public speaking, nor yet the rhetorical writing too often associated with the word.  Rhetoric is the dressing-up of conventional sentiment, eloquence the fearless expression of real emotion.  And this gift of the fearless expression of emotion—­fearless, that is, of ridicule, or of indifference in the hearer—­has been an inestimable strength to France.  It is a sign of the high average of French intelligence that feeling well-worded can stir and uplift it; that “words” are not half shamefacedly regarded as something separate from, and extraneous to, emotion, or even as a mere vent for it, but as actually animating and forming it.  Every additional faculty for exteriorizing states of feeling, giving them a face and a language, is a moral as well as an artistic asset, and Goethe was never wiser than when he wrote: 

“A god gave me the voice to speak my pain.”

It is not too much to say that the French are at this moment drawing a part of their national strength from their language.  The piety with which they have cherished and cultivated it has made it a precious instrument in their hands.  It can say so beautifully what they feel that they find strength and renovation in using it; and the word once uttered is passed on, and carries the same help to others.  Countless instances of such happy expression could be cited by any one who has lived the last year in France.  On the bodies of young soldiers have been found letters of farewell to their parents that made one think of some heroic Elizabethan verse; and the mothers robbed of these sons have sent them an answering cry of courage.

“Thank you,” such a mourner wrote me the other day, “for having understood the cruelty of our fate, and having pitied us.  Thank you also for having exalted the pride that is mingled with our unutterable sorrow.”  Simply that, and no more; but she might have been speaking for all the mothers of France.

When the eloquent expression of feeling does not issue in action—­or at least in a state of mind equivalent to action—­it sinks to the level of rhetoric; but in France at this moment expression and conduct supplement and reflect each other.  And this brings me to the other great attribute which goes to making up the tone of France:  the quality of courage.  It is not unintentionally that it comes last on my list.  French courage is courage rationalized, courage thought out, and found necessary to some special end; it is, as much as any other quality of the French temperament, the result of French intelligence.