All France works outward to the Front—­precisely as an endless chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration.  Leave the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of supplies.  You will find no break, no pause, no apparent haste, but never any slackening.  Everybody has his or her bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be used.  It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training, and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance.

You know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom till then we conceived we knew, how the man’s nature sometimes changes past knowledge or belief.  He who was altogether such an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to heights we thought unattainable.  Though he is the very same comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things he has become great.  So it is with France to-day.  She has discovered the measure of her soul.

THE NEW WAR

One sees this not alone in the—­it is more than contempt of death—­in the godlike preoccupation of her people under arms which makes them put death out of the account, but in the equal passion and fervour with which her people throughout give themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks that may in any way serve their sword.  I might tell you something that I saw of the cleaning out of certain latrines; of the education and antecedents of the cleaners; what they said in the matter and how perfectly the work was done.  There was a little Rabelais in it, naturally, but the rest was pure devotion, rejoicing to be of use.

Similarly with stables, barricades, and barbed-wire work, the clearing and piling away of wrecked house-rubbish, the serving of meals till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but keeps its temper; and all the unlovely, monotonous details that go with war.

The women, as I have tried to show, work stride for stride with the men, with hearts as resolute and a spirit that has little mercy for short-comings.  A woman takes her place wherever she can relieve a man—­in the shop, at the posts, on the tramways, the hotels, and a thousand other businesses.  She is inured to field-work, and half the harvest of France this year lies in her lap.  One feels at every turn how her men trust her.  She knows, for she shares everything with her world, what has befallen her sisters who are now in German hands, and her soul is the undying flame behind the men’s steel.  Neither men nor women have any illusion as to miracles presently to be performed which shall “sweep out” or “drive back” the Boche.  Since the Army is the Nation, they know much, though they are officially told little.  They all recognize that the old-fashioned “victory” of the past is almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front-line trench.  They all accept the new war, which means grinding down and wearing out the enemy by every means and plan and device that can be compassed.  It is slow and expensive, but as deadly sure as the logic that leads them to make it their one work, their sole thought, their single preoccupation.