The men stood easy, Lifeguards and Hussars and Dragoons, dismounted as they had been at Ypres, their eyes on the soldierly figure before them, their thoughts, I wager, away among the poppies and the cornflowers of the salient where in their graves dead comrades smiled in their last sleep at the recollection of the good fight well fought. The Commander-in-Chief indulged in no rhetorics. He, like the plain man he is, likes plain speaking. So he stood up there against the farm-cart, and talked to the men in a clear, soldierly voice, and as he spoke, lo! it was not the Commander-in-Chief addressing his troops, but just John French of the 19th talking to his cavalry, that cavalry he loved and made his life-work. There were no tears, no elegiacs, but heartening words of praise for good service stoutly rendered. There was, indeed, such perfect frankness in much of what the Field-Marshal said that I remember the blue pencil of the Censor cut furrows in the report of it I sent to my newspaper in London. As soon as a new body of troops arrives in France, whether Territorials or Colonials or New Army, you may be sure that, before very long, the Rolls Royce, flying the Union Jack from the roof--the only car that may fly the old flag in France--will appear outside their billets, and the Commander-in-Chief will descend to see for himself what the new material is like. One has only to glance at his despatches to see that he never fails to pay a tribute to good qualities in new troops out from home. Real soldier that he is, he always has a keen eye to the general appearance of the men, knowing that the best soldiers are the men who, even in the rigour of winter in the trenches, managed to preserve a cleanly appearance, and who, right up in the firing-line, are as punctilious about saluting as they would be in barracks at home. The Brigade of Guards, who always pride themselves upon their personal neatness, set a fine example to the army in this respect, and earned the approval of every good soldier. Sir John French has had many residences since he came to France in August. Châteaux, farms, colleges, or other public buildings, and the villas or town-houses of such local notabilities as the Mayor, the lawyer, or the doctor, have afforded him hospitality from the battle of Mons and the subsequent retreat down to the stalemate of the war of positions which brought our General Headquarters to anchor for a spell. But no matter where the Commander-in-Chief has lived, though his house were French, its atmosphere has always been wholly and essentially English. Thus, at G.H.Q. in the little town of which I wrote in my last chapter, though the large and stately rooms and rather florid furniture, the pictures and statuary of the house in which he lives are _bourgeois_ of the _bourgeois_, they are powerless to dissipate the pleasant family air of the place, the atmosphere of an English country seat in the shires.