England and his home and family have not been saved with every shot he has fired, and when he is off duty, he is not worried about the future of the Fatherland. He has learned in a hard school that his duty is just his job; and he has learned to do his job, killing, cooking, or horse-tending, with a keen, impersonal, professional interest. When I said something like this to a German officer in prison at Bruges, he jumped at it: "Ah, just so! He fights like a machine: he has no heart in it! He will be beaten by our Germans, inspired by the one thought of the German flag!" Not a bit! A boxer does not do less damage because he has learned how to fight, as an art, with years of training. When he is in the ring, heart tells in the end, but it tells through the degree of skill. When you have got a soldier who fights for the love of it, as a profession, and, besides that, has become a master of the art, you have found a champion who will out-last a rank of compulsory-service amateurs inspired by all the patriotism under the sun! Put our volunteer professionals in the firing line, leave them to fend for themselves on a terrible retreat, like that from Courtrai, and the individual grit, the racial inspiration will carry them through to the marvel of the world. Their training will stand them in all the better stead. They will know how to fight, what to do, even when their company officers have fallen, when they have lost their unit. Patriotism, personality, they are there behind the professional keenness, as a driving, reserve force. Our machine is not a barrel organ grinding out "Die Wacht am Rhein," which wants the big handle turned to keep the machinery going. Break the living organism, and each cell will remain instinct with life. What strikes the Continental troops most is our soldiers' gaiety! It is not that the men are excitedly funny or tuneful, in trench or camp. (Our songs the French consider funereal!) But between fights they become just themselves again. The fighting job is over for the moment. It would be absurd among fellow professionals to make a fuss about it. The eternal grumbling Briton grumbles still, about his wet feet (he has just come in from fifteen hours under fire in the muddy trenches); about his food, traditional subject of caustic jest; about some old "puffing Sal," a howitzer that made a mark of his trench all day. He will talk of the mud she scattered over him, not probably of the pals hit on either side of him. Such grumbling seems to the Continental trooper a joke, a tremendous social effort. The cheery man rags as heartily as he ever would. The unsociable man sets to washing or eating imperturbably. What is there to make a fuss about?