ng incident in the history of modern France.
The French had shown on that day that they had lost none of their
initiative of Napoleon's time, just as the British had shown that they
could be as stubborn and determined as in Wellington's.

XI

THE BRIGADE THAT WENT THROUGH

A young brigadier--A regular soldier--No heroics--How his brigade
charged--Systematically cleaning up the dugouts--"It was orders. We
did it."--The second advance--Holding on for two sleepless days and
nights--Soda water and cigars--Yorkshiremen, and a stubborn
lot--British phlegm--Five officers out of twenty who had "gone
through"--Stereotyped phrases and inexpressible emotions.

No sound of the guns was audible in this quiet French village where a
brigade out of the battle line was in rest. The few soldiers moving
about were looking in the shop windows, trying their French with the
inhabitants, or standing in small groups. Their faces were tired and
drawn as the only visible sign of the torment of fire that they had
undergone. They had met everything the German had to offer in the way of
projectiles and explosives; but before we have their story we shall have
that of the young brigadier-general who had his headquarters in one of
the houses. His was the brigade that went "through," and he was the kind
of brigadier who would send a brigade "through."

With its position in the attack of July 1st in the joint, as it were,
between the northern sector where the German line was not broken and
the southern where it was, this brigade had suffered what the charges
which failed had suffered and it had known the triumph of those which
had succeeded, at a cost in keeping with the experience.

The brigadier was a regular soldier and nothing but a soldier from head
to foot, in thought, in manner and in his decisive phrases. Nowadays,
when we seem to be drawing further and further away from versatility,
perhaps more than ever we like the soldier to be a soldier, the poet to
be a poet, the surgeon to be a surgeon; and I can even imagine this
brigadier preferring that if another man was to be a pacifist he should
be a real out and out pacifist. You knew at a glance without asking that
he had been in India and South Africa, that he was fond of sport and
probably fond of fighting. He had rubbed up against all kinds of men, as
the British officer who has the inclination may do in the course of his
career, and his straight eye--an eye whic