nation. To such as these, the words etiquette and politeness connote
weakness and timidity. Their notion of a really polite man is a dancing
master or a man milliner. They were always willing to admit that the
French were the politest nation in Europe and equally ready to assert that
the French were the weakest and least valorous, until the war opened their
eyes in amazement. Yet, that manners and fighting can go hand in hand
appears in the following anecdote:

In the midst of the war, some French soldiers and some non-French of the
Allied forces were receiving their rations in a village back of the lines.
The non-French fighters belonged to an Army that supplied rations
plentifully. They grabbed their allotments and stood about while hastily
eating, uninterrupted by conversation or other concern. The French
soldiers took their very meager portions of food, improvised a kind of
table on the top of a flat rock, and having laid out the rations,
including the small quantity of wine that formed part of the repast, sat
down in comfort and began their meal amid a chatter of talk. One of the
non-French soldiers, all of whom had finished their large supply of food
before the French had begun eating, asked sardonically: "Why do you
fellows make such a lot of fuss over the little bit of grub they give you
to eat?" The Frenchman replied: "Well, we are making war for civilization,
are we not? Very well, we are. Therefore, we eat in a civilized way."

To the French we owe the word etiquette, and it is amusing to discover its
origin in the commonplace familiar warning--"Keep off the grass." It
happened in the reign of Louis XIV, when the gardens of Versailles were
being laid out, that the master gardener, an old Scotsman, was sorely
tried because his newly seeded lawns were being continually
trampled upon. To keep trespassers off, he put up warning signs or
tickets--_etiquettes_--on which was indicated the path along which to