be of the very bravest."

"That is nothing," the man replied sombrely; "before they kill me I
shall have won many more. This I earned in revenge for my wife, who
was brutally murdered. And this and this and this for my daughters who
were ravished. And these others--they are for my sons who are now no
more."

"My friend, if you will let me, I should like to embrace you." And
there, in the sight of all the passengers, the old habitué of the
opera and the common soldier kissed each other. The one satisfaction
that the French blind have is in counting the number of Boche they
have slaughtered. "In that raid ten of us killed fifty," one will say;
"the memory makes me very happy."

Curiously enough the outrage that makes the Frenchman most revengeful
is not the murder of his family or the defilement of his women, but
the wilful killing of his land and orchards. The land gave birth to
all his flesh and blood; when his farm is laid waste wilfully, it
is as though the mother of all his generations was violated. This
accounts for the indomitable way in which the peasants insist on
staying on in their houses under shell-fire, refusing to depart till
they are forcibly turned out.

We in England, still less in America, have never approached the
loathing which is felt for the Boche in France. Men spit as they utter
his name, as though the very word was foul in the mouth.

In the face of all that they have suffered, I do not wonder that the
French misunderstand the easy good-humour with which we English go