I am confident that it will never have to be said that when Englishwomen sacrificed so much--and to a Frenchwoman one does not need to point out what a sacrifice it is when a woman risks youth and looks in hard unceasing work--that Frenchwomen failed to understand them or to attribute motives to them other than those that have animated themselves in their own labours throughout the war. That it must sometimes look odd to them one knows so well; how can it be otherwise? They see the girls, khaki-clad, out walking without "Tommies," hear the sounds of music and dancing coming from the recreation huts, where the girls are allowed to invite the men, and _vice versa_. Yet, if you investigate, you will find out that they are of an extraordinary simplicity, these girls and men, in their intercourse, in their earnest dancing, taught them by instructors from our Young Men's Christian Association, inspired by nothing more heady than lemonade, and chaperoned by the women-officers, who have attained a mixture of authority and motherly supervision over every individual girl that reminds me of nothing so much as the care, born of a sort of divine cunning, of a very dear and clever Mother Superior at a convent I once stayed at in France. For the interesting point for both the French and ourselves to note is that in the treatment of our Women's Army in France we have taken a leaf out of their book. We look after the girls with something of that love and care which surrounds a girl in France. For many of the Women's Army are working girls, who have never been guarded in their lives, whose parents had probably, after the lower-class English way, very little influence with them, and who, though good, honest, rough girls, were free to roam the streets of their native towns with their friends every evening once their work was over. Now, for what is for many of them the first time in their lives, they are being watched and guarded in a manner that is more French than English, and which I find admirable. As for their walks, their friendships with men, the personal observation of the acute French will show them that it is merely our Anglo-Saxon way, and the official statistics will prove to any doubters how well both the girls and the men can be trusted to behave themselves. We are a cold nation if you like, but there it is--it has its excellences, if not its charms. So much for fundamental differences, which, when intelligence and sympathy go out to meet them, become merely points on which temperaments agree to differ amicably, each giving its meed of admiration to the other. And for minor matters, little things of different customs only, that nevertheless, occasionally, in the strain of this war, ruffle even friends, I would say something like this, which is in the hearts of us all....