This can certainly not be said of France, where a crowd of new men have appeared, and where the well-known draughtsmen of pre-war days have been roused to unprecedented excellence by their emotions. At least one of them, M. Forain, has made history with his pencil. There came a time, when the first excitement had died away, when the victory of the Marne had for months been followed by stagnation—stagnation in victory, progress in casualties—a time when no news ever came, when Paris was left in a kind of twilight of suspense and endurance, when the economic pinch began to be acutely felt, when bereaved wives and mothers were told in the morning that their loved ones "were gloriously dead for their country," and read at night that "there is nothing to report on the front; the night was calm." And for just a moment the human need and sorrow of the individual cried louder than the pride of country. "It's very long, this war!" "What I want to know is, how much more do they expect us to endure?" "Could defeat be worse than war?" and even the sinister "if we win," were phrases that crept into conversation. It was hardly to be wondered at. France had expended so much energy on her magnificent effort in August, '14, when her very babies bore themselves proudly and with self-control, that she was bound to feel the reaction. It did not last long, and it was Forain who swept it away by a dose of strong tonic. He drew two French privates in a trench, snow and hail and shrapnel raining round them, in conditions as bad as the most anxious mother's nightmare could have pictured them. And one says: "If only they hold out!" The other, with a look of great surprise, enquires: "Who?" "Those civilians!" In a week that drawing was historic, and civilian France, with a blush and a laugh, had pulled herself together. M. Forain does not care to have his drawings reproduced, or this famous cartoon would have been included in this book. Nor, unfortunately, will M. Jean Véber have his cartoons reproduced till after the war, which deprives us of that Napoleon of his, standing on his own tomb and crying "Vive l'Angleterre," which created such a stir on both sides of the Channel. "La Brûte est Lâchée," by the same artist, is one of the most impressive drawings France has produced since the war. Published so early as September, '14, it represents the Prussian monster, madness and fury in his face, starting out like an unleashed animal on his career of destruction.