a glimpse of the valley of
the Somme. He swung his hand toward the waving fields of grain, the
villages and plots of woods, as the train flew along the metals between
rows of stately shade trees. "It is France. It is bred in our bones. We
are fighting for that--just what you see!"

"But wouldn't you take some of Germany if you could?" I asked.

"No. We want none of Germany and we want no Germans. Let them do as they
please with what is their own. They are brave; they fight well; but we
will not let them stay in France."

Look into the faces of the French soldiers and look into the faces of
Germans and you have two breeds as different as ever lived neighbor in
the world. It would seem impossible that there could be anything but a
truce between them and either preserve its own characteristics of
civilization. The privilege of each to survive through all the centuries
has been by force of arms and, after the Marne and Verdun, the Somme put
the seal on the French privilege to survive. If there be any hope of
true internationalism among the continental peoples I think that it can
rely on the Frenchman, who only wants to make the most of his own
without encroaching on anybody's else property and is disinterested in
human incubation for the purpose of overwhelming his neighbors. True
internationalism will spring from the provincialism that holds fast to
its own home and does not interfere with the worship by other countries
of their gods.

All this may seem rambling, but to a spectator of war indulging in a
little philosophy it goes to the kernel of the meaning of victory to the
French and to my own happiness in seeing the French win. Sometimes the
Frenchman seems the most soldierly of men; again, a superficial observer
might wonder if the French Army had any real discipline. And there,
again, you have French temperament; the old civilization that has
defined itself in democracy. For the French are the most democratic of
all peoples, not excluding ourselves. That is not saying that they are
the freest of all peoples, because no people on earth are freer than the
English or the American.

An Englishman is always on the lookout lest someone should interfere
with his individual rights as he conceives them. He is the least
gregarious of all Europeans in one sense and the French the most
gregarious, which is a factor contributing to French democracy. It is
his gregariousness that makes the Frenchman polite and his politeness