_A Grave in a Trench._] As before, in Cassel, I first began to realise how wonderful the workwomen of France were, so in Amiens I began to realise how different the young men of France were to what one was brought up at home to imagine.

I had always been led to believe that an Englishman was a far finer example of the human race than a Frenchman; but it certainly is not so now.

The young Frenchman is a keen, strong, hardy fellow, and his general level of physical development is very high.
I remember this was brought home to me by having baths at Amiens.
There was one bathroom in the hotel, and it contained a bath, but no hot water ran into it.

So I told my batman to get hot water brought there in the mornings.

The bathroom was on the first floor of the hotel, across on the other side of the courtyard from where I slept.
The assistant cook, a man six feet odd high, and weighing about thirteen stone, a merry, jovial great giant, used to heat water for me and put it into an enormous bronze tub, which held a whole bathful; and he and my batman used to carry this upstairs; but if I happened to come along at the same time, this great man used to bend down and pick me up with his free hand and set me on his shoulder, and so to the bathroom.
One morning, about a year later, he told me he was going to leave.