The acts of the small men in this war dwarf all the
pretensions of the Great Man. Imperatively these multitudinous heroes
forbid the setting up of effigies. When I was a young man I imitated
Swift and posed for cynicism; I will confess that now at fifty and
greatly helped by this war, I have fallen in love with mankind.
But if I had to pick out a single figure to stand for the finest quality
of the Allies' war, I should I think choose the figure of General
Joffre. He is something new in history. He is leadership without vulgar
ambition. He is the extreme antithesis to the Imperial boomster of
Berlin. He is as it were the ordinary common sense of men, incarnate. He
is the antithesis of the effigy.
By great good luck I was able to see him. I was delayed in Paris on my
way to Italy, and my friend Captain Millet arranged for a visit to the
French front at Soissons and put me in charge of Lieutenant de Tessin,
whom I had met in England studying British social questions long before
this war. Afterwards Lieutenant de Tessin took me to the great hotel--it
still proclaims "_Restaurant_" in big black letters on the garden
wall--which shelters the General Headquarters of France, and here I
was able to see and talk to Generals Pelle and Castelnau as well as to
General Joffre. They are three very remarkable and very different men.
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