solidarity of history, of sentiment, of aspiration which brings the French and ourselves so close together in this supreme struggle for liberty. Even our national colors are the same: that red, white, and blue which--as some poetic Frenchman has said--symbolizes the rise of democracy from blood, through peace, to Heaven. There has been much talk of France having been reborn through the agony of this war. Therein we are wrong. It is merely that we Americans have known the French only superficially, and that, in thinking and speaking of them, we have indulged in the careless and inaccurate habit of generalization. We have subscribed to the tradition of the superficiality and frivolity of the French people. We have believed them lacking in seriousness and perseverance, a strange misunderstanding of the race which has produced Richelieu and Talleyrand and Robespierre, La Salle and Marquette and Champlain. We thought them volatile and temperamental, these countrymen of Bossuet and Montesquieu, of Pascal and Corneille. We were wont to say quite patronizingly that French soldiers, though they possessed _verve_ and _élan_, were not stayers and “last-ditchers”--this of the men of the Marne and Verdun! The trouble has always been not with France, but with ourselves. The France that we knew before this war gave us a broader vision was the France of Rue de la Paix and the Champs Élysées, of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, of the Louvre and the Luxembourg, of Longchamps and Auteuil, of Poiret and Paquin, of Giro’s and Voisin’s, of the Bon Marché and the Galeries Lafayette, of the Opéra and the Comédie Française, of the Riviera and Trouville and Aix-les-Bains. What have we known of the sober, simple-hearted, industrious, frugal, plain-living, deeply religious people who are the real France? France has _not_ been reborn. It is an affront to her to say it. She has but cast aside the glittering garment which she wore for the gratification of strangers in order to free her sword arm. If you would understand the spirit which animates the French people, read this letter which was written by a French cook to his wife the day before he was killed in action. It is but a sample of thousands. _My dear Yvonne_:-- Do not worry. I have good hope of seeing you again, as well as our Raymond. I beg you to take care of yourself and also of my son, for you know that I should never forgive you if anything should happen to you or to him. Now, if by chance anything should happen to me,--for, after all, we are in war, and of course we are running some risk,--I hope you will be courageous, and be sure that if I die I put all my confidence in you, and I ask you to live in order to bring up my son to be a man--a man of spirit--and give him a good education as far as your means will permit.