But to the story. The things that war is are not often told except in generalization or in words of fanciful rhetoric. It would be hard to find elsewhere, crammed into a brief narrative, so much of the sense of actuality--that realism made perfect which even readers who have known no such experience feel instinctively is true. Yet the story is not made of horror. The essence of its life is the spirit that delights in peril. The "Soldier of the Legion" has in it that spinal thrill which has electrified great tales of battle since blood was first let and ink spilled to celebrate it. ELLERY SEDGWICK. ILLUSTRATIONS THE SOLDIER _Frontispiece_ AS THEY SWUNG INTO COLUMN THE NIGHT BEFORE THE 25TH OF SEPTEMBER 18 AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN LEGION SHOWING TYPE OF HAND-GRENADES 38 AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN LEGION RECEIVING NEWS FROM HOME 100 A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION I One day during the latter part of August, 1915, my regiment, the 2me Étranger (Foreign Legion), passed in review before the President of the French Republic and the commander-in-chief of her armies, General Joffre. On that day, after twelve months of fighting, the regiment was presented by President Poincaré with a battle-flag. The occasion marked the admission of the Légion Étrangère to equal footing with the regiments of the line. Two months later--it was October 28--the remnants of this regiment were paraded through the streets of Paris, and, with all military honors, this same battle-flag was taken across the Seine to the Hôtel des Invalides. There it was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and, with reverent ceremony, was placed between the flag of the cuirassiers who died at Reichshofen and the equally famous standard which the Garibaldians bore in 1870-71. The flag lives on. The regiment has ceased to exist. On the battlefield of La Champagne, from Souain to the Ferme Navarin, from Somme Py to the Butte de Souain, the ground is thickly studded with low wooden crosses and plain pine boards marked with the Mohammedan crescent and star. Beside the crosses you see bayonets thrust into the ground, and dangling from their cross-bars little metal disks which months ago served their purpose in identifying the dead and now mark their graves. Many mounds bear no mark at all. On others again you see a dozen helmets laid in rows, to mark the companionship of the dead below in a common grave. It is there you will find the Legion. Of the Legion I can tell you at first-hand. It is a story of adventurers, of criminals, of fugitives from justice. Some of them are drunkards, some thieves, and some with the mark of Cain upon them find others to keep them company. They are men I know the worst of. And yet I am proud of them--proud of having been one of them; very proud of having commanded some of them.