He has sustained the ordeal. His adaptability of temperament and breadth of outlook, for which all Britons may thank God, has enabled him to cope with an army ten times the size of the little force which he originally led out to France, and to surround himself with Generals who have shown themselves able to handle divisions where before they were dealing with battalions. Not only have the numbers of our army increased; the quality of our men has changed. The sturdy fighters of Mons and the Marne have been reinforced by Territorials who are, generally speaking, of a higher stamp of intelligence, and accordingly endowed with the good and bad fighting qualities which the more trained intellect bestows, and the men of the New Army, in which all types and classes of Briton are found side by side in the ranks. Not only has the question of the right leading of these new formations proved all-important, the problem of their assimilation into the existing organization was one requiring tact and a fine appreciation of the _Imponderabilia_ of the situation. That it has been successfully solved History, when it comes to review the world-shaking events of our days, beside which man seems but the puniest of pygmies, cannot fail to count to the merit of Sir John French. To our citizen army, then, Sir John French is more than a Commander-in-Chief. He is a national leader, the man to whom it is given to direct that fount of ardent patriotism which has inspired Britons, wherever the Union Jack flies, to lay down their work and follow the drum. No man is more conscious of the responsibility resting on his shoulders than Sir John French. No man is more profoundly convinced of the justice of our cause. No man could appreciate more gratefully the immense confidence which the nation has reposed in him by entrusting to his care the greatest army that the British Empire has ever put in the field. CHAPTER IX INTO THE FIRING-LINE I never come upon the firing-line without a sense of surprise. Upon eye and imagination alike it breaks with a sudden shock. You emerge from a long communication trench, driven right through all obstacles, now across a deserted highway with a vista of grass-grown cobbles stretching away on either hand; now straight through the vitals of a stricken farm, where the head is on a level with a floor littered with rubbish, discarded equipment, rags, or empty ration-tins; through the silent _basse cour_ with its empty chicken-run, its deserted pigeon-coop, its barns gaunt and blasted, its forlorn carts and rusting machinery; through cornfields waist-high in a self-sown crop gay with poppies and cornflowers.