We saw a good deal of the British army during our trip but the thing which gave me the clearest insight into the fundamental fighting, sporting spirit of the army was a story which an officer told me of an incident which occurred in the sector where he was stationed. An enlisted man and an officer were trapped during a daylight patrol when a mist lifted and they had to take shelter in a shell hole. They lay there for some hours, and then the soldier endeavored to make a break back for his own trenches. No sooner had his head and shoulders appeared above the shell hole than a German machine gun pattered away at him. He was hit and the officer started to climb up to his assistance. "No, don't come," said the soldier. "They got me, sir." He put his hand up and indicated a wound on the left hand side of his chest. "It was a damn good shot," he said. CHAPTER XVII BACK FROM PRISON France has a better right to fight than any nation in the world because she can wage war, even a slow and bitter war, with a gesture. Misery does not blind the French to the dramatic. Even the tears and the heartache are made to count for France. We saw wounded men come back from German prison camps and Lyons made the coming of these wrecked and shattered soldiers a pageant. Gray men, grim men, silent men stood up and shouted like boys in the bleachers because there was someone there to greet them with the right word. There is always somebody in France who has that word. This time it was a lieutenant colonel of artillery. He was a man big as Jess Willard and his voice boomed through the station like one of his own huge howitzers as he swung his arm above his head and said to the men from Germany: "I want you all to join with me in a great cry. Open your throats as well as your hearts. The cry we want to hear from you is one that you want to give because for so long a time you have been forbidden to cry 'Vive la France.'" The big man shouted as he said it, but this time the howitzer voice was not heard above the roar of other voices. The French soldiers who came back from Germany had been for some little time in a recuperation camp in Switzerland. A few were lame, many were thin and peaked and almost all were gray, but the Lyonnaise said that this was not nearly so bad as the last train load of men from German prisons. There were no madmen this time.