gesture as he
swept his pencil across the map from Dompierre to Flaucourt. Thus his
army had gone forward and that was all there was to it, which was enough
for the French and also for the Germans on this particular front.

"It went well! It goes well!" he said, with dramatic brevity. He had
made the plans which were so definite in the bold outline to which he
held all subordinates in a cooerdinated execution; and I should meet the
men who had carried out his plans, from artillerists who had blazed the
way to infantry who had stormed the enemy trenches. There was no
mistaking his happiness. It was not that of a general, but the common
happiness of all France.

Victory in France for France could never mean to an Englishman what it
meant to a Frenchman. The Englishman would have to be on his own soil
before he could understand what was in the heart of the French after
their drive on the Somme. I imagined that day that I was a Frenchman.
By proxy I shared their joy of winning, which in a way seemed to be
taking an unfair advantage of my position, considering that I had not
been fighting.

There is no race, it seems to me, who know quite so well how to enjoy
victory as the French. They make it glow with a rare quality which
absorbs you into their own exhilaration. I had the feeling that the
pulse of every citizen in France had quickened a few beats. All the
peasant women as they walked along the road stood a little straighter
and the old men and old women were renewing their youth in quiet
triumph; for now they had learned the first result of the offensive and
might permit themselves to exult.

Once before in this war at the Marne I had followed the French legions
in an advance. Then victory meant that France was safe. The people had
found salvation through their sacrifice, and their relief was so
profound that to the outsider they seemed hardly like the French in
their stoic gratitude. This time they were articulate, more like the
French of our conception. They could fondle victory and take it apart
and play with it and make the most of it.

If I had no more interest in the success of one European people than
another, then as a spectator I should choose that it should be to the
French, provided that I was permitted to be present. They make victory
no raucous-voiced, fleshy woman, shrilly gloating, no superwoman, cold
and efficient, who considers it her right as a superior being, but a
gracious person, smiling, laugh