Before they knew by actual experience what the Soixante-Quinze could do the Germans nicknamed it “the cigar-holder.” Now it has become (it was what they called it in Lorraine when we were there) “a barbarous and disgusting engine of war,” and the French artillerymen “the black devils.” Learn a lesson from the German gunner. Whereas he complains of “barbarous engines” and “black devils,” the French soldier greets his various projectiles as _la grosse_ or _la petite marmite_, or “the slow-coach,” or “the whistler,” or “the train,” just as our own men talk of Black Marias and Jack Johnsons. The contrast is significant. For it means that the Germans fear the French shells more than the French fear theirs. If the difference in the mental attitude is well founded, hardly anything could augur better for our eventual success. And it is. The ideal of Krupp, as of all Greater-Germanists, is the Kolossal. But the Frenchman is the better gunner. He not only has in the Soixante-Quinze a finer weapon, with better-regulated fuses, but he is incomparably quicker in serving it, and has a disconcerting way in hot actions of placing his battery in position (in an incredibly short space of time), firing the appointed number of rounds of spreading or direct fire, and then limbering up and departing to fresh woods and pastures new before the Germans have discovered where he is. It is not a bad thing to have a gun which hits as hard and as quick as Bombardier Wells, and battery commanders as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel. For the combination means that the Soixante-Quinze and its sister field guns do the maximum of damage to the enemy with the minimum risk of destruction for themselves. No wonder the French people are proud of their artillery and work for it with unbounded enthusiasm. And no wonder—for a different reason—that the British Mission which went to France towards the end of 1915 to study the production of ammunition were greatly impressed by the state of things which they found in the French workshops. There was, they reported, no loss of time, no trade-union restrictions, no limitation of profits, no objections raised by the workpeople, no difficulties created by the introduction, in practically all cases, of female labour, and no restrictions on the women working the same hours as the men “with a good-will which is most impressive,” and, in short, everything done to increase production. “As the war has proceeded,” says the report of the Mission, “the French nation has settled down with determination and a feeling of set purpose to the fulfilment of the task allotted to it. There is no question but that the nation is at war, and the dominant sentiment, not only of the men but also of the women, is to carry the war to a successful termination. Everything else is subordinated to this determination.”