Though the French _pioupiou_ is readily accessible to daring, and glories in a passionate achievement, he is not hypnotised by names, but demands a real aristocracy. It is an error to suppose that he resents superiority. On the contrary, he is constantly looking for it and is eager to recognise it when found. He is equally impressed by it, whether he finds it in the plain, plebeian features of Dupont or in the aristocratic mien of a De Rochefoucauld. The name matters nothing; the qualities are everything. But if he disregards family, he is insistent on a real distinction. Dupont must not shelter his mediocrity under democracy, or can the patrician hope to win devotion by a mere show of elegance. The accent is not of much account in the trenches; there, as elsewhere, must be a real superiority. If it is wanting, if the officer is mediocre and vulgar in his taste and habits, shows the same deficiencies and the same lack of control as the lower ranks, then his supremacy will be short-lived, whatever his grade. And it does happen that old soldiers, promoted from the ranks, sometimes fail to inspire the respect that should be theirs, because they cling to the old habits, the old _laisser-aller_, and know not how to assume the new virtues that should go with the new position. For commissioned rank in the French as in the other armies of the world must mark a real ascendancy, moral, mental, and even physical, to be effective in the best sense. It is part of the panoply of power.