This is a state of things which arises directly out of the conditions of modern war. The direct personal influence of military leaders on their troops is no longer possible owing to the vast scale on which modern wars are conducted. In former times the General directed the battle from a hill-top which afforded him a commanding view of the operations as they unfolded themselves beneath his eyes. To-day, the General also looks down on the battle from a height, but only metaphorically speaking. Field-Marshal Oyama playing croquet during the Battle of Mukden, the General in “Ole Luke Oie’s” brilliant sketch who fought and worsted a trout in a pleasant garden whilst hundreds of men went to their death--these are but the symbols of a state of mental detachment which is essential in the modern General called upon to handle vast masses of troops operating on a gigantic scale. To keep his mind clear and unembarrassed by a host of details, to retain his mental freshness against the moment when a supreme decision, or maybe a series of supreme decisions, has to be taken, the modern Commander-in-Chief must delegate much more of his powers than formerly, must relinquish a great measure of his direct personal influence on his men. The influence of the great modern General will always be indirect rather than direct. Comparatively few of the German troops fighting on the Western front had ever set eyes on Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, save in pictures, yet, when the rumour ran in the spring that he was coming to assume the supreme command in Flanders, the men in the trenches set up notices on the parapets announcing to the _Engländer_ that Hindenburg was coming, and that the Germans would be in Calais in a week. [Illustration: _“Daily Mail” phot._ “THE CHIEF.”] The influence of Sir John French on the British Army in France is as a strong leaven leavening the whole mass. The conditions of life of an army in the field, a great host of men working to the same end, the monotony of existence undisturbed by sex antagonism, united by the risk of death common to all, make men as sensitive to the transmission of influences as African tribes are to the transmission of news. In the field a strong character will make itself felt in a week. Imperceptibly, the men will begin to lean on qualities of determination, courage, intuition. All these are attributes of Sir John French, and they are, I believe, responsible, in quite an astonishing degree, for the splendid tenacity, the unshakable optimism, of the British Army in France.