which permits of democracy. An officer may talk with a private soldier
and the private may talk back because of French politeness and equality,
which yield fellowship at one moment and the next slip back into the
bonds of discipline which, by consent of public opinion, have tightened
until they are as strict as in Napoleon's day. Gregariousness was
supreme on this day of victory; democracy triumphant. Democracy had
proved itself again as had English freedom against Prussian system.
Vitality is another French possession and this means industry. The
German also is industrious, but more from discipline and training than
from a philosophy of life. French vitality is inborn, electrically
installed by the sunshine of France.

When a battery of French artillery moves along the road it is
democratic, but when it swings its guns into action it is military. Then
its vitality is something that is not the product of training, something
that training cannot produce. A French battalion moving up to the
trenches seems not to have any particular order, but when it goes over
the parapet in an attack it has the essence of military spirit which is
cooerdination of action. No two French soldiers seem quite alike on the
march or when moving about a village on leave. Each seems three beings:
one a Frenchman, one a soldier, a third himself. German psychology left
out the result of the combination, just as it never considered that the
British could in two years submerge their individualism sufficiently to
become a military nation.

There is a French word, _elan_, which has been much overworked in
describing French character. Other nations have no equivalent word;
other races lack the quality which it expresses, a quality which you
get in the wave of a hand from a peasant girl to a passing car, in the
woman who keeps a shop, in French art, habits, literature. To-day old
Monsieur Elan was director-general of the pageant.

This people of apt phrases have one for the operations before the trench
system was established; it is the "war of movement." That was the word,
movement, for the blue river of men and transport along the roads to the
front. We were back to the "war of movement" for the time being, at any
rate; for the French had broken through the German fortifications for a
depth of four to five miles in a single day.

X

ALONG THE ROAD TO VICTORY

A thrifty victory--Seventeen-inch guns asleep--A procession of guns
that gor