To another old lady he pointed out that she had written two numbers on the parcel.  “You don’t want two numbers, Mother.  Which is your boy’s number?  Tell me and I will strike out the other.”  “Leave them both,” she answered.  “Who knows whether my dear lad will be there to receive the parcel.  If he is not, I want it to go to some other Mother’s son.”

Affection means much to these men who are suffering, and they respond at once to any sympathy shown to them.  One man informed us with pride that when he left his native village he was “decked like an altar of the Blessed Virgin on the first of May.”  In other words, covered with flowers.

There are but few lonely soldiers now, since those who have no families to write to them receive letters and parcels from the Godmothers who have adopted them.  The men anxiously await the news of their adopted relatives and spend hours writing replies.  They love to receive letters, but, needless to say, a parcel is even more welcome.

I remember seeing one man writing page after page.  I suggested to him that he must have a particularly charming Godmother.  “Mademoiselle,” he replied, “I have no time for a Godmother since I myself am a Godfather.”  He then explained that far away in his village there was a young assistant in his shop, “And God knows the boy loves France, but both his lungs are touched, so they won’t take him, but I write and tell him that the good God has given me strength for two, that I fight for him and for myself, and that we are both doing well for France.”  I went back in imagination to the village.  I could see the glint in the boy’s eyes, realised how the blood pulsed quicker through his veins at the sight of, not the personal pronoun “I” in the singular, but the plural “We are doing well for France.”  For one glorious moment he was part of the hosts of France and in spirit serving his Motherland.  It is that spirit of the French nation that their enemies will never understand.

On one occasion a young German officer, covered with mud from head to foot, was brought before one of the French Generals.  He had been taken fighting cleanly, and the General was anxious to show him kindness.  He asked him if he would not prefer to cleanse himself before examination.  The young German drew himself up and replied:  “Look at me, General.  I am covered from head to foot with mud, and that mud is the soil of France—­you will never possess as much soil in Germany.”  The General turned to him with that gentle courtesy which marks the higher commands in France and answered:  “Monsieur, we may never possess as much soil in Germany, but there is something that you will never possess, and, until you conquer it, you cannot vanquish France, and that is the spirit of the French people.”

The French find it difficult to understand the arrogance which appears ingrained in the German character and which existed before the War.

I read once that in the guests’ book of a French hotel a Teutonic visitor wrote: