The Guards in the field judge life by two standards--the Guards’ standard and other men’s standard. There is nothing offensive to the rest of the army in their carefully studied exclusiveness. They are genuinely and generously appreciative of the undying gallantry displayed by line regiments. They show themselves friendly and companionable neighbours in the trenches, and stout and reliable comrades in action. But you will find that what they are seriously willing to concede to other regiments they will never allow to the Guards. They have no criticism to offer if a line battalion surrenders after a most gallant stand against overpowering odds, but if you probe their minds you will find that they would naturally expect a Guards battalion in similar circumstances to fight to the last man. And the remarkable thing is that, if you examine their records in this war, you will find that this is the standard the Guards have set and lived up to. Indeed, the Guards’ spirit is not of this war. It is of another age. It is as old as chivalry itself. It was to the British Guards, if you remember, that the Frenchmen at Fontenoy said: “_Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers!_” and as far as our Guards are concerned, a similar incident might occur in this war. You will never hear a Guardsman disparage the German as a fighter. He thinks the German is a bad sportsman, and, remembering Belgium and the _Lusitania_, he has a fierce joy in fighting him. But he knows he is a brave man, for our Guards, remember, saw the Prussian Guard advancing in parade order to their death at Ypres in the face of a perfect tornado of shot and shell. “They were fine, big men all,” a Guards officer who witnessed that last desperate attempt to break our line said to me, “and they walked past the corpses of their dead comrades choking their line of advance, and straight into our machine-gun fire like brave men that were not afraid to die.” It was the spirit of the Guards in Marlborough’s day that sent the Guardsman William Lettler across the river at Lille to cut the chains of the drawbridge. It was the same spirit that carried the Guards forward at Talavera with such impetuosity that a catastrophe was only narrowly averted, that at Waterloo welded them into a solid wall of steel. It was the Guards’ spirit that transformed the little Irishman, Michael O’Leary, into an epic hero; that inspired the Coldstreams at Ypres, the Scots Guards at Festubert, to fight to the last man.