United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The elan and contempt of danger shown by the young French drafts of the last contingent, averaging, perhaps, 20 years of age, was much admired by all. During the fighting, the French battleship St. Louis did excellent service against the Asiatic batteries.
The strong bond of affection between these two first and last of a family of six was enhanced by their very unlikeness. Lance had the élan of a torrent; Paul the stillness and depth of a mountain lake. Lance was a rapier; Paul a claymore slow to smite, formidable when roused. Both were natural leaders of men; both, it need hardly be added, 'Piffers' in the grain.
Then I accomplish something; here I work myself into nervous frenzies, and chafe and pant for nothing. I can feel how it weakens me; I can feel that I have less elasticity, less elan every day. Ah, God, let me go! August 25th. Why doesn't he answer my letter? August 27th. To-day I took myself off in a corner. I said: "Am I not here, have I not this thing to do?
They have no élan, no resilience or vitality. They are strong, but only when they act gregariously, not when they act as free and irresponsible individuals. They can fight, but only when they are driven, and only in a quarrel which is not their own. They fight to-day against the English as the slaves of the Kaiser even as they fought for the English as the mercenaries of the Landgrave of Hesse.
In an elan of fiery generosity Lucy decided to appeal to the friend of his youth, for as such he regarded Mocquard, in a letter of recommendation to him on my behalf.
The danger consisted in the facts that the outer lines were thinly held by Territorials and the inner lines had not been properly fortified; for the French, unequalled in the élan of attack, never developed that patient and meticulous preparation for defence which stood the Germans in good stead, and always found it easier to visualize attacks than to materialize defences.
The stews of a mill town may suddenly be illuminated by the radiance of a divine soul, to the amazement of profligate parents and the confusion of eugenists; but unless the unsolvable mystery of life has determined on a new species, and so by a sudden influx of the élan vital cuts off the line of physical succession and establishes one that is wholly new, then the brightness dies away with the passing of the splendid soul, and the established tendencies resume their sway.
It seems rather a paradox to point attention to the extraordinary tenacity of this basis of French character, the steady prudence and solidity which in the end always triumph over the light heart and light head, the excitability and often rash and dangerous elan, which are popularly supposed to be the chief distinguishing features of France at the very moment of beginning such a fairy tale, such a wonderful embodiment of the visionary and ideal, as is the story of Jeanne d'Arc.
Other nations have no equivalent word; other races lack the quality which it expresses, a quality which you get in the wave of a hand from a peasant girl to a passing car, in the woman who keeps a shop, in French art, habits, literature. To-day old Monsieur Élan was director-general of the pageant.
With the instinct of a born leader of men, Douglas saw that the salvation of himself and his party lay in action. The élan of his forces must be excited by the signal to ride down the enemy. Sounding the charge, he plunged into the thick of the fray.
Word Of The Day