coffee in the morning. They say that he objects to fighting at luncheon
time. That is the hour when he wants to sit down and forget his work
and laugh and talk and enjoy his eating. The Germans found this out
and tried to take his trenches at the noon hour. Interference with his
gastronomic habits made him so angry that he dropped the knife and
fork for the bayonet and took back any lost ground in a ferocious
counter-attack. He would teach those "Boches" to leave him to eat
his déjeuner in peace.

That appetizing stew in the kettles in the shed once more proved that
Frenchmen know how to cook. I didn't blame them for objecting to
being shot at by the Germans when they were about to eat it. The
average French soldier is better fed than at home; he gets more
meat, for a hungry soldier is usually a poor soldier. It is a very simple
problem with France's fine roads to feed that long line when it is
stationary. It is like feeding a city stretched out over a distance of four
hundred and fifty miles; a stated number of ounces each day for each
man and a known number of men to feed. From the railway head
trucks and motor-buses take the supplies up to the distributing points.
At one place I saw ten Paris motor-buses, their signs painted over in
a steel-grey to hide them from aeroplanes, and not one of them had
broken down through the war. The French take good care of their
equipment and their clothes; they waste no food. As a people is so is
their army, and the French are thrifty by nature.

Father Joffre, as the soldiers call him, is running the next largest
boarding establishment in Europe after the Kaiser and the Tsar. And
he has a happy family. It seemed to me that life ought to have been
utterly dull for this characteristic group of poilus, living crowded
together all winter in a remote village. Civilians sequestered in this