14 
Land & Water 
June 13, 19 1 8 
standing our boasted love of unrestricted liberty, our heredity 
is that of a military nation willing to obey a strong but kind 
mastei; We are nevertheless born individualists, and by 
instinct members of every Opposition. 
The French character is, in fact, a mass of contradictions. 
We dislike change and reform, for, though we'alvvays abuse 
the past, we arc the most traditionalist people in the world. 
Though we spend the best of our wit in writing lampoons 
and comic songs at the expense of our Government, in our 
hearts we respect anthority. A few gendarmes can keep the 
peace in large areas of our territory simply through the 
traditional veneration we have for any representative of the 
State. Among things we love are hierarchy, decorations, 
imposing titles, gold stripes and silver embroideries, huge and 
usejess swords, picturesque uniforms — in a word, the pomp 
of official functions. For the same reason, we willingly 
sacrifice our lives for glor^' and for the panache which sym- 
bolises the virtue of patriotism. We will permit ourselves 
to be ordered about by anybody in office as long as we trust 
him, and if we understand that the welfare of the community 
depends on our doing what we are told to do. But we nnist 
be allowed to grumble as much as we like while faithfully 
accomplishing our duty. 
It is not for nothing that the finest soldiers in the armies of 
Napoleon were called by the Emperor : his grognards — 
gnimblers. All the time they were fighting like heroes for 
their God the Emperor, who was for them the living image 
of "la Pairie," they grumbled, and the devotion of the people 
of France to C16menceau is of the same nature. The little 
Prime Minister is also a grognard — a grumbler — who has 
spent his life grumbling at everybody and at everything, but 
who has never ceased to worship his country, and who has 
always been ready to fight and to give his life for the prin- 
ciples he has defended during half a century. 
I have already had the opportunity of describing in 
Land & Water the principal phases of M. Cldmenceau's 
political life. I need not, therefore, repeat the memorab'e 
story of this master polemicist who has never sacrificed his 
convictions in order to obtain the political rewards which 
it would h^ve been so easy to get for the asking. His unique 
position to-day is largely due to the fact that he only comes 
into power in periods of crisis. 
M. C16menceau docs not represent a party, nor even a 
combination of parties. He is simply the man who, like all 
good Frenchmen, only wants one thing— to win the war. 
The nation has entrusted him with that superhuman task, 
and stands behind him as one compact block. To-day he is 
practically the absolute rule^ of France, the elect of the 
people, atjd already he has been an autocrat for eight months. 
A few may grumble, but all obey, for that grand old man 
is identified with the will of France to remain united till 
victory is achieved. 
His success has been phenomenal. In spite of recurrent 
Socialist manoeuvres, M. Clemenceau has maintained and 
strengthened his position in a Parliament which fears him 
because it knows that behind "the Tiger" there is France, 
military as well as civilian France. The poilu worships him ; 
the peasant trusts him, for the present and for the future ; 
the Syndicalist munition-maker fears him. Slowly, but 
surely, he is clearing the atmosphere behind the lines of all 
the German poison gas. Boloism is being riithlessly de- 
stroyed ; Malvy and Caillaux will not have very long to 
wait now for their trial. France knows that it is to 
Cl^menceau, and to him alone, that we owe this vital ciaxe 
of the body politic. 
That explains why a few days ago when in a dark and 
critical hour the French Prime Minister uttered words of 
warning to rouse the indomitable spirit of the Motherland, 
however mutilated by the enemy, the whole nation responded 
instantly to that appeal from the greatest living Frenchman. 
Sphagnum : By Eden Phillpotts 
Now that winter's scythe has lifted and the 
sun has climbed again, the heart beat of Dart- 
moor quickens, and her pulses throb to the 
vernal thrill. Where was withered grass all 
matted by rain and snow, now spear a million 
blades ; the black heather is warming with a russet tinge 
that means growth ; the whortleberry wires are thickening 
fast and will soon break into red leaves and red flower-bells. 
The velvet buds of the greater gorse flash their familiar 
gold again, and in fen and rill, twinkle the marsh violets — 
first of moor flowers to return. Above them the sweet gale's 
catkins swell and shine, like agate beads in the pale sunlight ; 
while the eagle fern has long passed through its winter splen- 
dours of auburn and purple. 
But the glory of the sphagnum has taken wing from many 
a cradle of the Dartmoor rivers, and wkere the stray sunbeam, 
wandering down a misty hill, would light of old the bog mosses 
into jewels, that marked a spring or rillet's starting-place, 
and set rainbow bright splashes of colour on the monochrome 
of the waste, there lies instead a scar. Formerly the sphagnum, 
now ruby red or amber, now apple-green or lemon, or warm 
with the whiteness of old ivory, made wonderful patterns 
among these granite boulders, and wove magic passages of 
light into the sombre texture of the heath ; but now patches 
of stripped stone or gravel mark the robbed beds, and the 
water that nourished their restraining masses falls nakedly 
in threads over the face of denuded rock, or lies and stares up- 
ward from black cups and pools. 
Honourable scars are these, and no wild green thing is better 
serving England than the sphagna. Their value in the 
economy of the moors is exceeding great ; but even that 
• subserves a lesser purpose than humanity's present call 
upon it. 
The peculiar cell structure of the genus sphagnum renders 
this moss as springy and absorbent as sponge, and its habit of 
growing from the crown of each filament and dying at an 
equal rate at the base, produces the peat moss, or swamp, 
that holds up great waters and creates the reservoirs of 
stream and river. Thus sphagnum has lived and died for 
centuries, and created a large portion of the existing peat 
integument of the moors. Its more intimate purpose for 
luxury need only be recorded : the grower of epiphytal 
orchids will know it well enough, and who in the good days 
past but received his flower roots and bulbs from Holland 
and Belgium safely packed in this sweet and safe medium ? 
But the paramount value to-day lies nearer man's heart. 
Already hundreds of tons of bog mosses have been forwarded 
to the military hospitals, and the cry is still for more. 
Enthusiastic and energetic searchers ■ are yet needed to go 
afield to the lonely centres of the wilderness and collect the 
unUmited supply of this natural dressing that awaits them. 
For beyond its perfect absorbent properties, the moss is held 
to be actually antiseptic and healing ; it contains iodine, 
and is of a texture so soft and friendly that no artificial 
material surpasses it. Too much cannot be gathered. 
The prophylactic and preservative quality of peat may 
be observed, for in the deep peat tyes will often appear timber 
of trees that grew where now no trees are and fell here, to 
be embalmed for centuries in the pure vegetable earth before 
it reappeared. One has seen limbs of birch from vanished 
thickets that probably flourished in Tudor times exposed by 
the peat cutter, with their silver bark as bright as when the 
tree fell. 
His Majesty has already thanked the Dartmoor moss col- 
lectors, and the authorities have recorded their existing and 
unceasing needs. They urge the necessity for systematic 
collecting and, as the spring returns and the central moors 
grow more accessible, hope to count upon increasing supplies. 
Therefore, let the fisherman, who is wont to penetrate the 
streams to their last pools, substitute a sack for his creel this 
year and leave his rod at home ; and may the holiday folk, 
amid their pleasures, permit no week to pass that does not 
help the hospital requirement. If one brave man's wound 
heals the quicker for your labour on the heights, then is the 
day's work rewarded and the day's beauty blessed. 
In an East Coast Town 
Watch through the town ; for the night wind brings us. 
Gun-fire, solemn through drifted spume 
Fhckering white on the low horizon, 
Great guns tolling the bell of doom. 
Watch ; "for their souls in the storm pass over ; 
Steal to your window, lovers, and look — 
Flash by flash, to preserve your body, 
Bodies that shatter in fire and smoke. 
Grey waves jostle them, speechless, Umbless ; 
Torn mists harry them as they ride. 
Day leaps up like the resurrection. 
Spreading their blood on the angry tide. 
Sherard ViSes. 
