Lord Roberts said, "Our men have done wonderfully at the front, and I am proud of the British Army." Another old soldier, Lord Sydenham, told an audience that British troops had never shown finer qualities. "Ah, Monsieur," said a French Staff Officer to an English friend, "without your Army we should have been lost. It proved that one volunteer is worth ten conscripts." In the retreat from the Belgian frontier it was the small British Army that kept back at fearful loss the huge army of Germany, and by doing so enabled the French forces to fall back in safety. One who was associated with the British at the beginning of this strategic retirement wrote: "I have seen a crack cavalry regiment almost annihilated in a desperate charge against the German artillery. I have seen the heroic Scots mown down. Yet the British have already forgotten those tragic days when they alone bore the weight of the German onslaught. When in my presence those British soldiers were told of the disasters to their best regiments they never flinched. 'Never mind. We'll have the best of it one day,' was the invariable answer after a moment's silence." Writing of the long resistance of our men against overwhelming odds in the region of Ypres, Sir John French said in his dispatches, "No more arduous task has ever been assigned to British soldiers, and in all their splendid history there is no instance of their having answered so magnificently to the desperate calls which of necessity were made upon them." The accuracy of British artillery and infantry shooting surprised both our allies and the enemy. A French officer attached to one of our contingents was astonished at the coolness and ingenuity of our soldiers when under fire. He noted their good food and the celerity with which they made tea, cooked, washed and shaved when the enemy's fire slackened. He said that our aviators had mastered the technique of the new arm. General Zurlinden wrote thus in _The Gaulois_: "The British Army, which grows from day to day, has done miracles under Field-Marshal French. It shows in all engagements its incontestable superiority over the German infantry and artillery; as well as over the German cavalry." There is a large body of German prisoners in the old fortress of Blaye, on the Gironde, and the French doctor told a friend that the first set of prisoners hastened to inform later arrivals that the English were fighting with the French against Germany. "This, however," they added, "is of no consequence whatever. The English soldiers are not worth taking into account." By-and-by other prisoners arrived, and the same story was repeated to them. They immediately protested. "You make a grievous mistake," they said, "if you believe that. The English soldiers are terrible fellows."