It was good to hear him speak of his career as simply as if he were relating the banal life of some village attorney. Perhaps an ancestor who served in Napoleon’s artillery, or a great-uncle who helped the Duc d’Aumale to conquer Algeria, were in measure responsible for his military tastes. Certainly he did not get them from his father following the pacific profession of a doctor in a Paris hospital. At sixteen or seventeen years of age the Tonking campaign attracted him with its promise of adventure, but his youthful imagination was mainly fired by reading the travels and explorations of Livingstone, of Cameron, Stanley, Brazza and Galliéni. And the Colonies, whatever their bad old reputation in France for forming soldiers who were theatrical and had no notion of modern warfare, since they fought against savages, has proved in this war the nursery of manly virtues. Therein a man learns courage and endurance, self-reliance and a faculty for improvising everything. It has produced men of the type of Marchand, one of the most romantic figures that ever donned the uniform of the Republic. His hold over his men is quite extraordinary; they are ready to follow him into the jaws of death. His exploits in the Soudan recall a time when there was no smile on the face of John Bull as he looked across to France. A poet in his ideality and lyric quality, he has the sublime courage of the Early Christian, the personal sway of the born leader, the heart and tenderness of a woman. No French general has come into closer contact with the English than Foch, for his army neighboured theirs for long months together, and none has a higher opinion of their qualities or was more sensible of the vast improvement effected in their fighting methods during the progress of the war. Foch is one of the most learned of the chiefs of the army; he directed the War School during a period of his career, and his lectures on the art of leading troops in battle are models of their kind. When war broke out, he was commanding at Nancy the 20th Army Corps, which includes the famous Iron Division. As disciplinarian he offers no excuses for himself or for others for any failure in duty; and there is no soldier, if it is not Pétain, who has adapted his science more successfully to the problems of a twentieth-century war. Looking forty-five, though twenty years older, he is of those who prepared assiduously for the great day of the battle. Alas! his own family were early victims of it, for at Charleroi fell his son and his son-in-law. Amongst his officers at Nancy was General Balfourier in charge of a brigade. Tall and slim and dark until active service had whitened his hair, Balfourier has the perfect manners of a man of the world. You would take him for a courtier if you did not know that he was a soldier and a particularly brave one. The Tsar’s congratulations reached him in the midst of the gigantic battle of Verdun, where he had handled the