Within his power, Sir John French has always sought to keep in personal contact with the men in the firing-line. More than once, on the retreat from Mons, the Commander-in-Chief might have been seen to leave his car and sit down beside the exhausted troops resting by the roadside, so tired that they did not care whether the whole German Army was in the next field. He would remain there on the dusty grass, and tell the men that it was only so many miles to the next halt for the night, and spur them on to fresh efforts by his generous praise of the splendid endurance they had shown up to then. In a little he would have them on their feet again, foot-sore and weary as they were, ready to face the world, if needs be, to win a pat on the shoulder, a word of appreciation, from “Sir John.” But the British Army in France has grown immeasurably since those days when four divisions was England’s entire contribution to the war on land. With the army of Mons, the Commander-in-Chief might yet hope to be the John French of South Africa, where the cavalry hailed the trim little man on the white horse as the harbinger of stern, swift blows against the Boer, as the incorporation of dash, decision, and resourcefulness. But with the great citizen army of to-day, in which he counts divisions where before he counted battalions, the British Generalissimo could not hope to keep in personal touch in the same degree as was possible with the cavalry in South Africa or with the little Expeditionary Force of August, 1914. Nevertheless, Sir John French has never failed in this war to visit formations that have distinguished themselves, and to express to them personally his appreciation of their good work. I remember, after the second battle of Ypres, receiving word that the Commander-in-Chief would inspect some brigades of cavalry that had held our line round Ypres on May 13, when the Germans made their last and most violent attempt to burst through to the sea. It was a fine, warm morning in June, a regular Aldershot review day, though, Heaven knows! there was little enough of the red and gold of Cæsar’s Camp or Laffan’s Plain about the squadrons in their war-worn khaki drawn up in a square in a meadow by a country road. The Commander of the Cavalry Corps was there, and the Divisional General and the Brigadiers, and just in front, beside a fine, broad Union Jack fluttering from a flagstaff planted on a farm-cart, Sir John French, exquisitely neat, as usual, in his trim khaki, with four rows of medal-ribbons, and immaculate brown field-boots, and a cane that he swung as he talked.