There is a popular idea that Napoleon was a super-genius who won
his battles single-handed. It is wrong. He had a lot of Frenchmen
along to help. Much the same kind of Frenchmen live to-day. Not until
they fought again would the world believe this. It seems that the
excitable Gaul, whom some people thought would become demoralized
in face of German organization, merely talks with his hands. In a
great crisis he is cool, as he always was. I like the French for their
democracy and humanity. I like them, too, for leaving their war
to France and Marianne; for not dragging in God as do the Germans.
For it is just possible that God is not in the fight. We don't know
that He even approved of the war.




V
And Calais Waits



To the traveller, Calais had been the symbol of the shortest route
from London to Paris, the shortest spell of torment in crossing the
British Channel. It was a point where one felt infinite relief or sad
physical anticipations. In the last days of November Calais became
the symbol of a struggle for world-power. The British and the French
were fighting to hold Calais; the Germans to get it. In Calais,
Germany would have her foot on the Atlantic coast. She could look
across only twenty-two miles of water to the chalk cliffs of Dover. She
would be as near her rival as twice the length of Manhattan Island;