Here are young men at play. They know they are the incomparable
soldiers. The guns have been on them for fifteen months, but they remain
unbroken. Twice in the year, if they had yielded, this might have been a
short war. But that is only saying that if Brittany had a different
breed of men the world and its future would contain less hope. They
carry the fine liquor of France, and something of their own added for
bouquet. They are happy soldiers--happy in their brief life, with its
flash of daring, and happy in their death. It is still sweet to die for
one's country, and that at no far-flung outpost over the seas and sands,
but just at the home border. As we carried our wounded sailors down from
Nieuport to the great hospital of Zuydcoote on the Dunkirk highway,
there is a sign-board, a bridge, and a custom-house that mark the point
where we pass from Belgium into France. We drove our ambulance with the
rear curtain raised, so that the wounded men, lying on the stretchers,
could be cheered by the flow of scenery. Sometimes, as we crossed that
border-line, one of the men would pick it up with his eye, and would
say to his comrade: "France! Now we are in France, the beautiful
country."
"What do you mean?" I asked one lad, who had brightened visibly.
"The other countries," he said, "are flat and dirty. The people are of
mixed races. France is not so.
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