Today again I have been among the thousands of French soldiers. It is splendid to see them because of their fine bearing. They are men in the prime of life, not so young as some of the British and with a graver look than one sees on British faces, when they have not yet reached the zone of fire. They are men who have seen all that war means during these years of agony and hope and boredom and death. They have no illusions. They stare into the face of death unflinchingly and shrug their shoulders at its worst menace and still have faith in victory. So I read them, if any man may read the thoughts that lie behind those bronzed faces with the dark eyes and upturned mustaches under the blue painted helmets or the black Tam o' Shanters. They are not gay or boisterous in their humor, and they do not sing like the British as they march, but they seem to have been born to this war, and its life is their life, and they are professionals. The Tricolor passes along the roads of France and Flanders, and French trumpets ring out across the flat fields below Scherpenberg, and all the spirit of the French fighting men, who have proved themselves great soldiers in this war, as for thousands of years of history, is mingled with our own battalions. Together yesterday they gave the German Army a hard knock. The British Guards _In his cable of May 1 Mr. Gibbs gave details of the extraordinary heroism of the British Guards. He related incidents which had occurred April 11 to 14, after the Germans had broken through the Portuguese in their efforts to widen the gap between Armentières and Merville by gaining the crossings of the Lys._ The Grenadier, Irish, and Coldstream Guards were sent forward along the Hazebrouck-Estaires road when the situation was at its worst, when the men of the 15th Division and other units had fought themselves out in continual rearguard and holding actions, so that some of those still in the line could hardly walk or stand, and when it was utterly necessary to keep the Germans in check until a body of Australian troops had time to arrive. The Guards were asked to hold back the enemy until those Australians came and to fight at all costs for forty-eight hours against the German tide of men and guns which was attempting to flow around the other hard pressed men, and that is what the Guards did, fighting in separate bodies with the enemy pressing in on both flanks. Greatly outnumbered, they beat back attack after attack, and gained precious hours, vital hours, by the most noble self-sacrifice. A party of Grenadiers were so closely surrounded that their officer sent back a message saying: "My men are standing back to back and shooting on all sides."