As regards general education, the French officers were superior to those of any of the other Allied armies. There was hardly one of them who had not a literary, political and historical culture which we should have regarded as above the average, and in this they also ranked above the British; their conversation was nearly always extremely agreeable owing to their high intellectual level, wide range of interests and their keen wit. Their knowledge of foreign languages on the other hand was very slight; regular officers usually knew German, and among the reserve officers one occasionally came across some who for business or other reasons knew foreign languages, but the great majority only understood French. Personally they were generally attractive, had good manners, made a great many compliments and very keenly appreciated any courtesy extended to them. At mess their behaviour was decorous, and they spoke less loudly than their Italian colleagues, many of whom invariably raised their voices to add strength to the arguments they were sustaining. But they had a somewhat exaggerated idea of the absolute superiority of the French over all other nations in everything, and they did not hide it; for this reason they sometimes appeared ungenerous, and succeeded in irritating their foreign colleagues of all the Allied armies. The officers attached to the General Staff seldom made any attempt to disguise their weakness for foreign decorations, and the extremely transparent allusions which they made to the subjects when conversing with liaison officers or others whom they believed to have ribbons galore at their disposal contributed not a little to make the horrors of war quite bearable. French Staff officers were always under the incubus of the _mot d’ordre_. One day the word would be passed round that optimism was to be the keynote, and then one saw nothing but smiling faces, cheerfulness and confidence in the final victory within a month. Another day the _mot d’ordre_ was in a minor key; that meant long faces, black pessimism, _le cafard_, no end to the war in sight, the Germans invincible, peace goodness knows when and at goodness knows what conditions. All this had nothing to do with the actual military events either fortunate or the reverse, but was the result of orders from above. Similarly, their attitude towards the Allies varied from day to day, being warmly cordial at one moment and coldly courteous the next.