A captured Prussian lieutenant, with whom I had a quick talk beside the road near Rheims a few days ago, was pleased to express surprise at the courage and doggedness of our British "mercenaries," as he called them. He thought I was insulting him, when I told him that the conditions under which our volunteer private served were very similar to those of the German officer! It has been always a new surprise to find how many Germans, even those who know military history and are well acquainted with England, have allowed their sense of national rivalry with us, of jealousy rather than hatred, to blind their judgment, otherwise expert in military matters. They have continued to make three elementary blunders about our army; and they are now paying dearly for the miscalculation. The first blunder has been to confuse a man who volunteers to fight for his own country, as his profession, with a "mercenary"; by which we mean a man who hires himself out to fight for any country which offers him enough pay. The second has been in some way to reason that a man who voluntarily makes himself efficient to defend his own country, and receives an allowance for it, must be inferior, as fighting material, to a man who compulsorily so serves his country, and receives an allowance for it. And the third has been the astounding ignorance of the teaching of military history, which proves conclusively that, from the time when the Spartans beat the Athenians down to the present day, the professional-soldier army has always beaten the amateur or conscript army, even at great disadvantage of numbers. That is the essential difference which we have been seeing every day in the field. Our men are fighting, just as consciously, for the preservation and honour of their country, as are their conscript enemies. But, because of their race, they do not care to make a parade of that consciousness. We do not encourage in war more than in peace the "jelly-bellied flag-flappers" whom Mr. Kipling has pilloried. It takes a very special story of pluck to draw from any collection of our soldiers even a "Good old England!" or a "What will they say at home to that?" Fighting, manœuvre, fatigue, firing, wounds, death, they are all just parts of their professional job; which they like to do well for its own sake, and in which they have a technical interest. When the fighting is done, in camp, in reserve, in intervals, it is striking to see the different look on the faces of the different races. The Briton keeps nothing of the fixed "war" look, the strained, set expression and eyes of some other races, as if the weight of a country was on their shoulders, as if death was near in thought and always being defied, as if the whole world was an object of suspicion. The moment his "job" of fighting, or whatever it may be, is done for the time, the Briton becomes himself again. Just a tired and gay, or a tired and grumbly fellow who has finished his job, according to his ordinary nature.