Many writers have asked, and M. Maurice Barres prominently among them, what is the reason of the fact that intelligence has taken a front place in this war? What has been the source of the spirit of self-immolation which has driven the intellectual and imaginative section of French youth to hold out both hands to catch the full downpour of the rain of death? There is no precedent for it in French history, and we may observe for ourselves how new a thing it was, and how unexpected, by comparing with the ardent and radiant letters and poems of the youngest generation the most patriotic expressions of their elders. A single example may suffice. No man of letters has given a nobler witness to the truth of his patriotism than Colonel Patrice Mahon, known in letters as Art Roe. His novels, which dealt largely with modern Russian life, in relation with the French army, were virile and elevated productions, but he was a man of fifty at the time of his heroic death at the head of his troops, in the battle of Wisembach (August 22, 1914), and his tone was not that of such young men as Camille Violand and Marcel Drouet. To read again the "Pingot et moi" of Art Roe is to return to a book of the utmost sincerity and valour, but it was published in 1893, and there is no touch of the splendour of 1914 about it. A figure which stands midway between the generation of Art Roe and that of the adolescent comrades of a new Sophocles of whom we shall presently speak, is Captain E.J. Detanger, who seems to be transitional, and to share the qualities of both. This name has, even now, scarcely grown familiar to the eye and ear, but it proves to have been the real name of Emile Nolly, whose romances of modern life in the Extreme East had been widely read just before the war. Nolly's earliest books, "Hien le Maboul" and "La Barque Annamite" (but particularly the latter), gave promise of a new Pierre Loti or a new Rudyard Kipling, but totally distinct in manner from both. Detanger was just thirty-four when the war broke out, and he was one of its early victims, dying at Blainville-sur-l'Eau on September 5. He greatly distinguished himself by his personal bravery, and the cross of the Legion of Honour was pinned to his blood-stained uniform on his last battle-field. The tribute of a fellow-officer to this devoted man of letters may be quoted here. It is an example of the sudden and complete transformation which turned artists into soldiers at the first sound of the bugle:--