And then consider the continuity of tradition in the English regiments: they bear on their standards the names of the old victories, and their history and achievements can be traced for hundreds of years. Not so with the French regiments. Their identity has been lost in the shifting sands of the Revolution. To quote one instance: the Regiment of Piedmont, which existed in the time of Henry VIII, became a departmental regiment, then the Third of the Line, and then the Seventh—it is impossible to keep pace with its changes. Practically the history of regiments in France stops at the Revolution. That was the moment of great changes when everything was swept away and new principles established. England the immutable, France the fluid, enthusiastic, passionate, artistic, wildly given over to new ideas what singular destiny has brought the two together as comrades and allies on the field of battle in a union much closer than in the Crimea, where, however, Canrobert came to the same conclusion as Foch, who repeated the eulogium, at an interval of sixty years, to General Delannes, a former chief of staff: "Once the British Army has agreed to do something, the thing is done." The unchanging spirit, then, the bull-dog tenacity, that tremendous grip that never lets go—these British qualities blend and render powerful the Latin temperament, with its quickness of comprehension and adaptability. Slow to see a new fact, still slower to excite himself, John Bull is the ideal character to play the waiting game, that game of exhaustion of the war. The more wonderful, then, in the eyes of the French that he should have made so prodigious a military effort.