from the standpoints of power, intelligence,
and humanity. This latter quality specially impressed me. I do not
believe any army with such high ideals can easily be beaten, and I judge
not only from Generals in command, but the men in the trenches. One
morning I was going through the trenches near the most important point
where the line was continually under fire.

Passing from the second line to a point less than a hundred yards from
the German rifles I came face to face with a General of division. He was
sauntering along for the morning's stroll he chose to take in the
trenches with his men rather than on the safer roads at the rear. He
smoked a cigarette and seemed careless of danger. He continually patted
his soldiers on the back as he passed and called them "his little
braves."

I could not help wondering whether the German General opposite was
setting his men the same splendid example. I inquired the French
General's name; he was General Fayolle, conceded by all the armies to be
the greatest artillery expert in the world. Comradeship between officers
and men always is well known in the French Army, but I never before
realized how the officers were so willing to accept quite the same fate.

In Paris the popular appellation for a German is "boche." Not once at
the front did I hear this word used by officers or men. They deplore it,
just as they deplore many things that happen in Paris. Every officer I
talked to declared the Germans were a brave, strong enemy; they waste no
time calling them names.

"They are wonderful, but we will beat them," was the way one officer
summed up the general feeling.

Another illustration of the French officer at the front: The City of
Vermelles of 10,000 inhabitants was captured from the Germans after
fifty-four days' fighting. It was taken literally from house to house,
the French engineers sapping and mining the Germans out of every
stronghold, destroying every single house, incidentally forever
upsetting my own one-time idea that the French are a frivolous people.
So determined were they to retake this town that they fought in the
streets with artillery at a distance of twenty-one feet, probably the
shortest range artillery duel in the history of the world.

The Germans before the final evacuation buried hundreds of their own
dead. Every yard in the city was filled with little crosses--the ground
was so trampled that the mounds of graves were crushed down level with
the grou