So that little British Expeditionary Force, in ratio of number one to twenty or thirty of the French army, crossed the Channel to help save Belgium. Gallantry it had worthy of the brightest chapter in the immortal history of its regiments from Quebec to Kandahar, from Agincourt, Blenheim and Waterloo to South Africa, Guards and Hussars, Highlanders and Lowlanders, kilts and breeks, Connaught Rangers and Royal Fusiliers, Duke of Wellington's and Prince of Wales' Own, come again to Flanders. The best blood of England was leading Tommy Atkins. Whatever British aristocracy is or is not, it never forgets its duty to the England of its fathers. It is never ingrate to its fortune. The time had come to go out and die for England, if need be, and these officers went as their ancestors had gone before them, as they would go to lectures at Oxford, to the cricket field and the polo field, in outward phlegm, but with a mighty passion in their hearts. The Germans affected to despise this little army. It had not been trained in the mass tactics which hurl columns of flesh forward to gain tactical points that have been mauled by artillery fire. You do not use mass tactics against Boers, nor against Afridis, nor Filipinos. It is difficult to combine the two kinds of efficiency. Those who were on the march to the relief of the Peking Legations recall how the Germans were as ill at ease in that kind of work as the Americans and British were at home. It made us misjudge the Germans and the Germans misjudge us when they thought of us as trying to make war on the continent of Europe. A small, mobile, regular army, formed to go overseas and march long distances, was to fight in a war where millions were engaged and a day's march would cover an immense stretch of territory in international calculations of gain and loss.