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This little book, long the subject of my meditation, suddenly beganto take shape one Sunday morning when I was your guest at Gisburne. Wewere actually starting for church, and the car was at the door, when Iannounced to you that the spirit moved me to stay behind. "Very well,then," you said, with your habitual good-nature, "we leave you to yourfolios." My "folios" were the three volumes of one of the smallest ofbooks, the 18mo edition of Vauvenargues published by Plon in 1874. Inthe midst of a violent thunderstorm, which was like a declaration ofwar upon your golden Yorkshire summer, I wrote my first pages, and youwere so sceptical, when you came back, as to my having done anythingbut watch the lightning, that I told you you would have to endure theresponsibility of being sponsor to a work thus suddenly begun in allthe agitation of the elements. So, such as time has proved it, here itis.
The object of these essays is to trace back to its source, or to someof its sources—for the soul of France is far too complex to bemeasured by one system—the spirit of gallantry which inspired theyoung French officers at the beginning of the war. We cannot examinetoo minutely, or with too reverent an enthusiasm, the effort of ourgreat ally, and in this theme for our admiration there are manystrains, some of which present themselves in apparent opposition toone another. The war has now lasted so long, and has so completelyaltered its character, that what was true of the temper of thesoldiers of France in November 1914 is no longer true in April 1918.Confidence and determination are still there, there is no diminutionin domestic intensity or in patriotic fervour, but the longcontinuance of the struggle has modified the temper of the Frenchofficer, and it will probably never be again what it was in the stressand tempest of sacrifice three years and a half ago, when the youngFrench soldiers, flushed with the idealisms which they had imbibed atSt. Cyr, rushed to battle like paladins, "with a pure heart," in therapture of chivalry and duty.
All that has long been wearied out, and might even be forgotten, ifthe letters and journals of a great cloud of witnesses were notfortunately extant. The record kept by the friends of Paul Lintier andthose others whom I am presently to mention, and by innumerablepersons to whose memory justice cannot here be done, will keep freshin the history of France the idealism of a splendid generation. Now wesee, and for a long time past have seen, a different attitude on thefields of Champagne and Picardy. Ther