Protracted trench warfare, it has been said a thousand times, is quite contrary to the French disposition, which is all dash and go and impulse. But to-day we shall have to revise our views, no doubt, and find that the French have mixed with their audacity, with their natural quickness of thought and action and their high receptivity, some of that resistance and tenacity which are characteristically British. Confirmed Anglophiles in France attribute this phenomenon to the moral influence of ourselves—a flattering and satisfying doctrine to our own self-esteem. But the appearance of this "new" virtue extended to all parts of the population, and was so universal that we cannot credit this grand attribute of the French in the hour of their great adversity to anything but their own innate qualities. It was exhibited by mayors of communes, even the most remote, who have been exposed to the brutalities of the invaders; by the clergy to a conspicuous degree—nothing was more touching and remarkable than their absolute devotion in the most nerve-racking conditions. It was shown, indeed, by the whole of the civil population, young and old, and especially by women. How splendid they were! They did their work with extreme quietude, with a positive genius for adaptability, and no illustrated paper published photographs of their uniforms—for they had none. On the first day of the mobilisation the French women turned into the fields to gather the harvest the men had left on the ground. They had no time to choose a suitable costume; no need of exhortations from the Board of Agriculture. They were left to do the work, and they did it without fuss and without parade. Such examples of determination, tenacity, sheer self-sacrifice, courage and abnegation existed in all directions, diffusing a golden light over the country, just as the coloured windows at the Invalides bathe the tomb of Napoleon in a splendid effulgence. In the army itself the adaptability of its leaders is a thousand times exemplified by the manner in which erudite soldiers who have taught tactics and strategy in the War School, along certain lines, suddenly confronted with the problems of actual war, have seen that they were quite other than those laid down in the text-books, and thereafter have speedily adapted themselves to the new conditions. Some failed, and there arose the rumour of many enforced retirements from active command. But the inference to be drawn from this was not always correctly stated. The generals in most cases were not incompetent; they correctly applied the old war rules to the situations as they arose; but they were not sufficiently supple; they did not adapt themselves to the new conditions. The officers who proved the most successful were, for the most part, the colonels and majors, who in a few months obtained important commands.