FOREWORD

This book is intended as a presentation card to theFrench army. It is a plain story for plain people,and there has been a deliberate avoidance of anytechnicalities. In it you will find references to theleading figures in the fighting organisation of France—Joffreand his most brilliant collaborators; and I havetried to render just homage to the "poilu," who is theFrench common soldier. Perhaps the most touchingthought about that man, whose deeds of glory andpure heroism will inspire the poets for many a longyear, is that he represents not the soldier ofprofession, but the soldier drawn from the most peacefuloccupations. Practically the first great encounterof the French with the Germans in the battle ofCharleroi, and the subsequent retreat, accounted fora large part of the regular army, and more or lessplaced hors de combat the greater number of itsofficers. That professional force was replaced bythe Reserve and later supplemented by the youngestclasses—men culled from the very heart of pacificFrance. They came to the trenches with all theircivilian instincts—it was a peasant and bourgeoisarmy—but in an amazingly short space of time theywere vying with the old soldier in the brilliance oftheir exploits, in their ability to endure supremehardship with the greatest gallantry, and withoutcomplaint: an extraordinary story of adaptability.And it came to pass in the process of time that therewas the army at the front and the army in the rear:the army of the field and the army of the munitionfactory, recruited from different elements, for themen in the trenches were the peasants, the sons ofagricultural France; and the army of the factories—themunition workers—was composed of the artisanand typical town dweller. And it is as well toremember, when the question of the future of France,after the war, arises, that the peasant supported toa great extent the physical sufferings of the war, thedanger of death and mutilation, the exposure inthe trenches, the cold and damp, whilst the townsmanwas harnessed to the intensive labour of producingshot and shell for infantry and guns. I do notinsinuate that the townsman shirked the more bittertask. Each time a demand was made upon him,involving sacrifice of life, he also was ready to riseto any height of abnegation. And in the moremechanical branches of the war, such, for instance,as artillery and aviation, it was often a townsmanwho was the hero, and who gained, by some glowingdeed, the precious symbol of the war cross and even,perhaps, the Legion of Honour. A pure Parisianwas Guynemer, the sergean

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