It pleases me to think of him meeting Bacchus and Binty and the rest and arguing out the meaning of it all. Does he know now, I wonder, the colossal issues that were at stake during that terrible fortnight between Mons and the Marne, and does he forgive us our seeming cruelty? I hope so. I like to think that Bilfred understands. _THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE._ BY LIEUT. F. J. SALMON. We had been away from our area for several days on a special mission and were the guests of the French Staff at X. The programme for the day included a visit to an observation post, the exact position of which was not known to our guide, and it was necessary to call at a French battery and pick up someone to show us the way. A very cheering description of the situation at Verdun by an officer who had just come from there had kept us rather later than usual at lunch, a fact to which we owed our escape from a very unpleasant bit of ‘strafing.’ We had still some 200 yards to go to reach the battery when the Huns started shelling it furiously. A few ‘overs’ came within about 100 yards of us and there was rather an unpleasant whirr of splinters, so we took refuge behind a house. The crash of the first salvo had aroused a good woman and her baby and she came out, smiling, to see what was happening. Carrying the baby, she went out into the road and stood in the line of fire watching the fun. She occasionally dodged back behind the wall when the bits flew too near, just as a child would run from a snowball. She said her man was in the ‘Chasseurs Alpins’ and had been in the Vosges since the beginning—he was not afraid of the Boches, why should she be? A French ‘poilu’ passing by scolded her for exposing the child and she disappeared.