neral Headquarters. The French
attitude towards the war is utterly personal; it is bayonet to
bayonet. It depends on the unflinching courage of every individual
French man and woman. The English attitude is that of the
knight-errant, seeking high adventures and welcoming death in a noble
cause. But the German attitude disregards the individual and knows
nothing of gallantry. It lacks utterly the spiritual elation which
made the strength of the French at Verdun and of the English at Mons.
The German attitude is that of a soulless organisation, invented for
one purpose--profitable conquest. War for the Hun is not a final and
dreaded atonement for the restoring of justice to the world; it is
a business undertaking which, as he is fond of telling us, has never
failed to yield him good interest on his capital. I have seen a
good deal of the capital he has invested in the battlefields he has
lost--men smashed to pulp, bruised by shells out of resemblance to
anything human, the breeding place of flies and pestilence, no
longer the homes of loyalties and affections. I cannot conceive what
percentage of returns can be said to compensate for the agony expended
on such indecent Golgothas. However, the Hun has assured us that it
pays him; he flatters himself that he is a first-class business man.

But so does the American, and he knows the game from more points of
view. For years he has patterned his schools and colleges on German
educational methods. What applies to his civilian centres of learning
applies to his military as well. German text-books gave the basis for
all American military thought. American officers have been trained in
German strategy just as thoroughly as if they had lived in Potsdam.
At the start of the war many of them were in the field with the German
armies as observers. They are able to synchronise their thoughts with
the thoughts of their German enemies and at the same time to take
advantage of all that the Allies can teach them.

"War is a business," the Germans have said. The Americans, with an
ideal shining in their eyes, have replied, "Very well. We didn't want
to fight you; but now that you have forced us, we will fight you on
your own terms. We will make war on you as a business, for we are
businessmen. We will crush you coldly, dispassionately, without
rancour, without mercy till we have proved to you that war is not
profitable business, but hell."

The American, as I have met him in France, has n