While military service alters, it does not create; the stolid Breton--stolid by comparison with the men of central and Southern France, remains stolid as before he went up for training, for the Army has grafted on him nothing that is new--it has merely added to his knowledge and developed, in the way of characteristics, what was already there. But the Breton is the better for his two years--without them he would be a very stolid and unimaginative person indeed, and he has learned to stir himself, to make the best of himself and the work that is his to perform. Similarly the traditional Frenchman, coming from the wine-growing districts of the south, and a hot-headed and impetuous individual, has his eccentricities modified, for hot-headedness does not pay in military service, and this man has learned to control himself just as the Breton has acquired a little more rapidity of movement. Yet the individual characteristics of the two types remain; personal traits have been modified by discipline, but not destroyed, for while the Army of the Republic creates nothing, it also annihilates nothing. The men have been moulded to a pattern, but they are the same men in essence, with no quality removed altogether. Usually, they are vastly improved. Especially is this last true of the many youths who think--it is a common failing of youth--that they know everything and are capable of all things. The Army modifies their self-conceit; it teaches them that they are but as other men, needing to learn. It first of all destroys the unhealthy growth of unjustifiable self-confidence, reducing these men to utter self-abasement; then, on this foundation, the Army and the training it involves gradually build up, not a belief in self-powers, but a knowledge of the capacities and powers of self, of their limitations as well as their extent. The braggart who goes to his military training comes back chastened and, if he still boasts, it is of things that he is really capable of doing, knowledge that he has actually obtained--he makes no claims that he cannot justify, as a rule. This much the Army of France does for the men who pass through it and back to their normal tasks in life.