d positive.

"A thousand thanks, but the man is shamming. He is lazy. He must get
out."

We had to give up our soldier. The sergeant knew his men, and justice is
the basic doctrine which guides the discipline of the French colonial
army. The regiment of Algerians must have stopped for lunch or
maneuvers. For they were just coming through the Place du Marche when I
reached there. Only the colonel was on horse. At the turn of the road,
the captains stood out of rank to watch their companies wheel. Our
soldier of the morning passed. He had forgotten his limp. The sergeant
recognized me, and pointed to the soldier. His left upper eyelid came
down with a wink, as if to say, "Don't I know them!"

There is a spirit of _camaraderie_ between officers and men in Frejus
that one never sees in native regiments of the British army. The French
have none of our Anglo-Saxon feeling of caste and race prejudice, which
makes discipline depend upon aloofness. French officers can be severe
without being stern: and they know the difference between poise and pose.
We Anglo-Saxons need to revise radically our judgment of the French in
regard to certain traits that are the _sine qua non_ of military
efficiency. Energy, resourcefulness, coolness, persistence, endurance,
pluck--where have these pet virtues of ours been more strikingly tested,
where have they been more abundantly found, than in the French army?

The sign of the French colonial army is an anchor, and Frejus is full of
officers who wear it. They are mostly men of the Midi, Roman Gauls every
inch of them. The Lamys, the Gallienis, the Joffres, the Fochs, the
Lyauteys were born with a genius for leadership in war. Their aptitude
for African conquest and their joy in African colonization are the
heritage of their native land. The fortunes of southern France and
northern Africa were inseparable through the ten centuries of the spread
of civilization and the Latin and Teutonic invasions in the Western
Mediterranean. The connection was unbroken from the time that Hannibal
marched his African troops through Frejus to Italy until the Omayyads
conquered Tunis, Algeria and Morocco. It is the most natural thing in
the world to see African troops in Frejus. They belong here now, because
since men began to sail in ships, they have always been at home here as
friends or enemies. Mediterranean Africa and Mediterranean France
received simultaneously political, social and re