Our statesman said that we had better give up trying to locate the
battery; and one of the officers called a halt to trying to go up to the
firing-line on the part of a personally-conducted party, after we
stopped a private hurrying back from the front on some errand. With
his alertness, the easy swing of his walk, his light step, and his
freedom of spirit and appearance, he typified the thing which the
French call élan. Whenever one asked a question of a French private
you could depend upon a direct answer. He knew or he did not know.
This definiteness, the result of military training as well as of Gallic
lucidity of thought, is not the least of the human factors in making an
efficient army, where every man and every unit must definitely know
his part. This young man, you realized, had tasted the "salt of life," as
Lord Kitchener calls it. He had heard the close sing of bullets; he had
known the intoxication of a charge.

"Does everything go well?" M. Doumer asked. "It is not going at all,
now. It is sticking," was the answer. "Some Germans were busy up
there in the stone quarries while the others were falling back. They
have a covered trench and rapid-fire-gun positions to sweep a zone
of fire which they have cleared."

Famous stone quarries of Soissons, providing ready-made dug-outs
as shelter from shells!

There is a story of how before Marengo Napoleon heard a private
saying: "Now this is what the general ought to do!" It was Napoleon's
own plan revealed. "You keep still!" he said. "This army has too many
generals."

"They mean to make a stand," the private went on. "It's an ideal place