The Foreign Legion, which in time of peace is composed of between eight and ten thousand men, but which now probably exceeds the strength of an army corps, since no fewer than thirty-two thousand odd foreigners enrolled themselves from August 21st, 1914, to April 1st, 1915, is, as it were, a microcosm of the world. According to official French returns, there were in its ranks at the beginning of the war nine thousand five hundred Alsatians and Lorrainers, fourteen hundred and sixty-two Belgians, three hundred and seventy-nine English, three thousand three hundred and ninety-three Russians, four thousand nine hundred and thirteen Italians, thirteen hundred and eighty Greeks, five hundred and ninety-one Luxembourgers, nine hundred and sixty-nine Spaniards, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven Swiss, thirteen hundred and sixty-nine Austro-Hungarians, one thousand and twenty-seven Germans, five hundred and ninety-two Turks, six hundred Americans, and four thousand two hundred and fifty-four of various other nationalties, including, in all probability, as at the time of the Empire, Poles, Albanians, Croatians, Illyrians, and negroes. In this world-in-little all classes of society are represented--the prince and the pauper, the scholar and the illiterate, the one-time brilliant officer, prominent financier, and ecclesiastic. All of them are brought to a common level with the lowest of the low through inherent human weakness, some foolish act committed in haste and repented of at leisure, or else through some misfortune or other over which the man who is "down on his luck" has no control whatever. The social outcast, the deserter, the gambler, the fugitive from justice, the man who has been crossed in love, the desperate man who, on second thoughts, prefers the ranks of the Legion to suicide, the man who has a pure love of soldiering or an inordinate taste for adventure, the out-and-out failure who has been told by his family to "make good" and clean off his debt to society--all of them are found here, living under the shadow of mystery, undergoing the most arduous life imaginable, and, for the most part, suffering in silence. So heterogenous are they that the legionaries, quite unjustly, have been called many ill names. Through the faults of a few, who necessarily find their way into such an organization, they have all been indiscriminately labelled with such epithets as "band of criminals," "degenerates," "troop of dishonoured foreigners," "heartless mercenaries," and so on. But many sins can be forgiven the soldiers of the Legion when we read their history aright, and come to understand their Spartan characters in the hour of trial and danger. And it is for that reason that, despite their antecedents and shortcomings, they are now generally known in French military circles as "The Heroic Rascals," or as "The Glorious Blackguards."