d in a small, temporary wooden chapel listened to a
sermon from a Scotch dominie who did not spare its length in awe of the
eminent member of his congregation. Otherwise, he left the chateau only
when he went to see with his own eyes some section of the front or of
the developing organization.

Of course, the room in the chateau which was his office was hung with
maps as the offices of all the great leaders are, according to report.
It seems the most obvious decoration. Whether it was the latest
photograph from an aeroplane or the most recent diagram of plans of
attack, it came to him if his subordinates thought it worth while. All
rivers of information flowed to the little chateau. He and the Chief of
Staff alone might be said to know all that was going on. Talking with
him in the office, which had been the study of a French country
gentleman, one gained an idea of the things which interested him; of the
processes by which he was building up his organization. He was the
clearing house of all ideas and through them he was setting the
criterion of efficiency. He spoke of the cause for which he was fighting
as if this were the great thing of all to him and to every man under
him, but without allowing his feelings to interfere with his judgment of
the enemy. His opponent was seen without illusion, as soldier sees
soldier. To him his problem was not one of sentiment, but of military
power. He dealt in blows; and blows alone could win the war.

Simplicity and directness of thought, decision and readiness to accept
responsibility, seemed second nature to the man secluded in that little
chateau, free from any confusion of detail, who had a task--the greatest
ever fallen to the lot of a British commander--of making a raw army into
a force which could undertake an offensive against frontal positions
considered impregnable by many experts and occupied by the skilful
German Army. He had, in common with Sir William Robertson, "a good deal
of thinking to do"; and what better place could he have chosen than this
retreat out of the sound of the guns, where through his subordinates he
felt the pulse of the whole army day by day?

His favorite expression was "the spirit that quickeneth"; the spirit of
effort, of discipline, of the fellowship of cohesion of
organization--spreading out from the personality at the desk in this
room down through all the units to the men themselves. Though officers
and soldiers rarely saw him they had felt