Perhaps a colonel on the front will tell you with elation,--"We know that the Boches across the way are discouraged, because our prisoners say so,--we take prisoners more easily than we did,--and they are all mixed up in their formations. We know that they have to drive their men to the job, that the lines about here are stripped as bare as they dare keep them. There used to be a lot of reserve troops behind their lines, but our aviators say there aren't any in X----any more! And they aren't as free with their _obus_ as they used to be, and they are 'old nightingales,' not first quality." Perhaps the staff officers will smile, knowing that the enemy is massing his forces elsewhere on the long front, but this trick of rapid change is becoming harder to perform, and more exhausting. At any rate, the plain _poilus_ in the front trenches are instinctively sure: "We'll have 'em now soon!" They have watched that grim gray wall opposite so long that, like animals, they can feel what is going on there on the other side. * * * * * At staff headquarters in a more contained, reserved way there is the same air of vital confidence. "Have you seen the new pump?" the general asked me. "We are pumping good water all over this sector into the front trenches, too.... Oh, we are _bien installé!_ ... It may be another year, two, perhaps more, but the end is certain. There is one man in the trenches, another just behind in reserve, still another resting somewhere in the woods for his week off, and more, all the men we want back in the _dépôts_!" And he turns the talk to the good health of his men, their fine spirit. For one of the human, lovable qualities of the officers whom I met is that they prefer to talk about the comfort, the _morale_, the _esprit_, of their men to discussing "operations." Just here I see where the French have risen above the machine idea of the German lesson. There is a something plus, over and above "preparation," "organization," "efficiency," which the Latin has and on which his confidence in ultimate victory largely rests. That is his belief in the individual, his reliance on the strength of the individual's spirit. To the French officer this seems the all-important factor in the army: military force depends ultimately upon the _esprit_ of the individual which creates the _morale_ of the whole. Of course, the army must be equipped in the modern way and fought in the modern way with all the resources of science, with aeroplanes, bombs, motor transport, and heavy artillery. But without the full devotion of the individual, without the coöperation of his _esprit_, the army would be a dead machine, especially in this nerve-rending endurance contest of the trenches. Here is the Latin idea, which is absolutely opposed to the German machine theory of war.