Animosity has not disturbed Anatole France, for “one conquers the earth only by ploughing it.” He has told the story simply, without heroics, painted a poetic picture of Joan growing up “on bitter soil among rough and sober folk, fed on rosy wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life”; she had knowledge of tree-worship, and hung garlands on the boughs as does to-day Russian youth on the birch-tree; she was a pagan and grew up among private wars, fire, blood and murder. It is all extraordinarily living, for Anatole France speaks familiarly, using the names of local tradesmen, peasants and lawyers. And so the story goes on on the well-known lines, continually critical, for Joan reveals the clerical influence by using terms known only to ecclesiastics[5]; she uses sometimes peasant language, sometimes rhetoric, as if she had a double personality; she is fierce, obstinate, firm, as if hypnotised; she impresses the crowd by refusing Charles the name of King until she herself has led him to Reims. Anatole France is fair even to the English, who were cruel only because they were afraid of her as “a superhuman, terrible, frightful creature, a demon from hell before whom the bravest quailed.” Anatole France criticises Joan also as a strategist, in which rôle, it seems, she was most incompetent; but faith may inflame where strategy fails. Her strength came evidently from her inflated view of her mission, so common in lunatic asylums, for she went so far as to dream of a crusade against the Turks and the Hussites.... [5] Miracle? All this is implied, not stated; Anatole France advances few opinions, digresses not often; he tells the story simply and allows us to draw our own conclusions. Apart from the historical references, the book is as simple as Renan’s _Life of Jesus_, and as damaging. Anatole France is happiest when painting pictures of the enthusiastic mobs, swearing the oaths of men-at-arms and singing songs with the ribald women, painting pictures of the towns in the wars of the Middle Ages. At times, however, he cannot restrain himself, must discuss a side issue that interests him, such as the worship of virtue and of virgins. Then his charm grows Virgilian: “In this land of Gaul the white priestesses of the forests had left some memory of their holy beauty; and sometimes one saw, fleeting in the Isle of Sein, along the misty shores of the sea, the pale shadow of the nine sisters who, in bygone days, at will laid or awoke the storm.” It is not a disrespectful, but a critical book, and I suppose it is true enough that the inspiration of Joan merely served to bring luck to the French troops, was indeed a military mascot. To claim more is to claim a little too much, for did not, during the European War, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, Germans all invoke the Almighty and make quite sure that He was on their side? Yet everybody cannot win; the Christian God is no Janus.