The fact that it was a war to resist invasion made it a holy war, differing intrinsically from a war of aggression, which would never have gained his whole-hearted support. The Great War awakened the old vehemence of the race, which first revealed its astounding power at the battle of Valmy, where the shoeless hosts of the Revolution shook the proudest might of Prussia. That was the birth of the National Army, which, a century and a quarter later, was to come to such extraordinary development. The nation coalesced in 1792 against the foreign tyrant, but that union lacked the complete union of 1914, though it made up in intensity of spirit what it needed in numbers. The Revolution fought for liberty against a caste system; then, as now, the peasant recognised that he was defending his own ground—not the privileges of feudal Europe—and the knowledge made him strong. A man is always formidable in defending his own. In the same way, the French patriot realised that militarism had forced the German to make war upon his peaceful neighbour. In the hospitals I have seen the soldier share with the sick German prisoner dainties that had been brought to him. "Poor devil, he was forced to fight against us," he would say, showing his realisation of the intimate differences of the two. In _his_ case it was a privilege to fight; he was defending his own fields against the hordes; in the other, a blind obedience to the State compelled him to take arm. One was a virtual volunteer in a sacred cause, the other the victim of German Imperialism. It was well to know what one was fighting for, and when one had realised the grandeur of the cause, then heat and cold, mud and rats, and even occasional shortness of rations became of small account. The issue was paramount. The French soldier was actuated by a deep love of country. In his mortal breast beat the immortal heart of France. When the bugle sounded, as M. Charles Humbert, the Senator Editor has told us, there was a magnificent hastening to the frontier. The fighting souls of the people reappeared, the old memory of struggles was reawakened. "We dreamed of heroic encounters, of brilliant actions, of sublime gestures, of flags conquered in the sun. The reality, alas, was quite otherwise! Rapidly the war became a sad and protracted affair." It became an invisible, scientific, subterranean war of tenacity and endurance, though sometimes blazing into manoeuvre battles as at Verdun.