The canteen of the British Army, so far as drinks are concerned, provides beer only for its men, but beer is scarcely ever seen in a French canteen. Various brands of wine are at the disposal of the conscript, and it is possible to get a bottle of drinkable stuff for fivepence, though in order to obtain a really good brand one must pay at least a franc, for which the wine obtained is equal to that for which many a London restaurant will charge half a crown. Wine is the staple drink of the Army, though brandy finds favour among the hardened drinkers. The man who goes to the canteen for a bottle of wine to share with a comrade must not be regarded as a tippler, for the clarets which the canteen provides are not very alcoholic beverages, containing as they do but little more alcohol to the pint than supposedly "teetotal" ginger beer of some brands.
To each company of infantry, as to each squadron of cavalry and battery of artillery, is allotted a barber, whose business is to shave every conscript of his company at least twice a week free of cost, the barber being remunerated by the authorities. Since most men need to shave every day in order to fulfil the requirements of parade appearance, it is obvious that the efforts of the barber in this direction must be supplemented by the men themselves, and on the whole the barber gets an easy time as a rule, for the man who shaves himself three times a week will usually get the business done without troubling the barber at any time.
Complaints used to be made, especially in infantry stations, about the sanitation and lack of washing accommodation in French barracks, but modern custom has remedied all this. Chief cause of reformation was the Russo-Japanese War, which showed that an army is twice as effective if matters of sanitation are properly attended to—it does not pay to have men falling sick from the presence of nursery beds for infectious diseases. The French Army, ever first in experiment for the efficiency of its men and in search of ways to increase the fighting value of the forces available, has taken the lessons of modern sanitation to heart. In practically all barracks, now, the soldier can enjoy a hot bath or a cold one when he wishes; all that is still to be desired is a greater regard for necessary sanitary measures, and a greater regard for personal cleanliness among the men themselves. The peasant lad, who has lived a comparatively lonely life in absolutely healthy surroundings, does not understand at first that barrack life exposes him to fresh dangers, and he has to be taught what, to a town dweller, are elementary facts as regards infection. For this reason, tubercular and allied complaints still rank rather high in the medical statistics of the French Army, though every year sees an improvement in this respect.
But a dissertation of this kind has taken us far from the canteen, and the methods employed by the conscript in spending his spare time. Not that the canteen is the only place of amusement, but in stated hours, as in the British Army, the canteen is the rallying point of men off duty. It is closed to men undergoing salle de police at all times, and this forms a not inconsiderable part of their punishment; for to a soldier the canteen is not merely a place where he may obtain refreshments, alcoholic and otherwise, but also a place to meet his friends, hear a good song, discuss the doings of various companies, and of various friends, whom he meets here and with whom he can compare notes. The barrack room may not contain more than one close friend—if that—and the other men in the squad to which the conscript belongs may be of different provinces, of totally different ideals and ways of thought—as if a Highland Scot were planted down in a squad of Londoners. In the canteen, however, a man can be certain of meeting and sitting down for a confab with his own chums, men not only of his year—that is, joining on the same first of October as himself—but also hailing, perhaps, from the same town or village as himself, glad to share a bottle of claret at a franc the bottle and to talk over the things left behind with civilian clothing.
As for canteen songs, one may guess that in the French Army there is always plenty of real talent, for the nation as a whole, like all Latin nationalities, is a very musical one, and since all come to the Army, the singers come with the rest. The songs, perhaps, are not of the highest drawing-room order, even for French drawing-rooms, but the musical and vocal abilities of the singers are beyond question; for in a gathering of men where the best can be obtained, little short of the best ventures to bring itself to notice.
This mention of canteen songs recalls the fact that the French infantryman beguiles the tedium of route-marching by songs, interminably long songs which go on and on for miles; in recalling what the next verse will be, a man forgets the number of miles between him and the end of the march, or he thinks he may be able to, which amounts to very nearly the same thing. They still sing songs that were in vogue at the time of Fontenoy, as they march at ease along the endless straight roads of the country, with their rifles slung anyhow and their formations broken up that friend may march with friend. This is when marching "at ease" only, for let a column of marching infantrymen come to the streets of a town, and they immediately stiffen up to show themselves at their best before the girls at the windows. The Army of the Republic is a part of the nation, but the women of the nation manifest no less interest in it for the fact that their fathers and brothers have served. There is something in the sound of a military band and the sight of a column of uniformed men that will always bring faces to the windows of a French house. "So our Jacques is perhaps marching somewhere," they say, or—"Thus we marched to relieve Bazaine," will remark a veteran of the '70 campaign, feeling the while that these men may yet make of "'70" a thing no longer to remember in connection with lost provinces. And, once the town or village street is left behind, and the road stretches unbroken before the column, the men begin to sing again, and their officers smile at the song—they are too wise, in the French Army, to suppress the singing and the cigarette smoking, and thus the men march well. As well, certainly, as any infantry in the world, and probably better than most.
Although it is a conscript army, there are regimental traditions, as in the British or in any other service. Your conscript in his second year of service will tell how his regiment captured the colours here, or saved the position there, in the way-back days, and is nearly as proud of it as if he, instead of the fellow soldiers of his great-grandfather, were concerned in the business. Esprit de corps, though now a common phrase in connection with the British Army, was first of all a French idiom—and is yet, and an untranslatable one too—designed to express the French soldier's pride in his own unit of the service, or in his own branch of the service. At the present time, it has as much application to the French Army as in the day when the phrase was coined; pride in his own powers of endurance, and pride in the unit in which he serves, still characterise the French conscript, and in the last ten years or so this feeling has grown to such an extent as to place the French Army, although a conscript organisation, on a level with a voluntary force.
CAVALRY