men; these the
force.

The marvel was not that the Indians were able to fight as well as they
did in that climate, but that they fought at all. What welcome summer
brought from their gleaming black eyes! July or August could not be
too hot for them. On a plateau one afternoon I saw them in a
gymkhana. It was a treat for the King of the Belgians, who has had
few holidays, indeed, this last year, and for the French peasants who
came from the neighbourhood. Yelling, wild as they were in tribal days
before the British brought order and peace to India, the horsemen
galloped across the open space, picking up handkerchiefs from the
ground and impaling tent pegs on their lances. The French peasants
clapped their hands and the British Indian officers said, "Good!" when
the performer succeeded, or, "Too bad!" when he failed.

If you asked the officers for the secret of the Indian Empire they said:
"We try to be fair to the natives!" which means that they are just and
even-tempered. An enormous, loose-jointed machine the British
Empire, which seems sometimes to creak a bit, yet holds together for
that very reason. Imperial weight may have interfered with British
adaptability to the kind of warfare which was the one kind that the
Germans had to train for; but certainly some Englishmen must know
how to rule.

That church bell across the street from our chateau begins its clangor
at dawn, summoning the French women and children and the old
men to the fields in harvest time. But its peal carrying across the
farmlands is softened by distance and sweet to the tired workers in
the evening. In the morning it tells them that the day is long and they
have much to do before dark. After that thought I never complained
because it robbed me of my sleep. I felt ashamed not to be up and
doing myself, and worked with a better spirit.

"Will they do it?"

We asked this question as often in our mess in those August days
as, Will the Russians lose Warsaw? Would the peasants be able to
get in their crops, with all the able-bodied men away? I had inside
information from the village mayor and the blacksmith and the baker
that they would. A financial expert, the baker. Of course, he said,
France would go on fighting till the Germans were beaten, just as the
old men and the women and children said, whether the church bell
were clanging the matins or the angelus. But there was the question
of finances. It took money to fight. The Americans, he knew