dless
chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration. Leave
the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of
supplies. You will find no break, no pause, no apparent
haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or her
bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be
used. It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition
of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard
labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training,
and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance.

You know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom
till then we conceived we knew, how the man's nature sometimes
changes past knowledge or belief. He who was altogether such
an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to
heights we thought unattainable. Though he is the very same
comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things
he has become great. So it is with France to-day. She has
discovered the measure of her soul.

THE NEW WAR

One sees this not alone in the--it is more than contempt of
death--in the godlike preoccupation of her people under arms
which makes them put death out of the account, but in the
equal passion and fervour with which her people throughout
give themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks
that may in any way serve their sword. I might tell you
something that I saw of the cleaning out of certain latrines;
of the education and antecedents of the cleaners; what they
said in the matter and how perfectly the work was done. There
was a little Rabelais in it, naturally, but the rest was pure
devotion, rejoicing to be of use.

Similarly with stables, barricades, and barbed-wire work, the
clearing and piling away of wrecked house-rubbish, the serving
of meals till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but
keeps its temper; and all the unlovely, monotonous details
that go with war.

The women, as I have tried to show, work stride for stride
with the men, with hearts as resolute and a spirit that has
little mercy for short-comings. A woman takes her place
wherever she can relieve a man--in the shop, at the posts, on
the tramways, the hotels, and a thousand other businesses.
She is inured to field-work, and half the harvest of France
this year lies in her lap. One feels at every turn how her
men trust her. She knows, for she shares everything with her
world, what has befallen her sisters who ar