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Doubtless you wonder how a man may be an Etonian one year and a trooper in a French Hussar Regiment the next.

I am a Frenchman, I am proud to say; but my dear mother, God rest her soul, was an Englishwoman; and my father, like myself, was a great admirer of England and of English institutions. Hence my being sent to school at Eton.

On my father's death, soon after I had left school, my uncle sent for me.

He was even then a General, the youngest in the French Army, and his wife is the sister of an extremely prominent and powerful politician, at that time--and again since--Minister of State for War.

My uncle is fantastically patriotic, and La France is his goddess. For her he would love to die, and for her he would see everybody else die--even so agreeable a person as myself. When his last moments come, he will be frightfully sick if circumstances are not appropriate for him to say, "I die--that France may live"--a difficult statement to make convincingly, if you are sitting in a Bath chair at ninety, and at Vichy or Aix.

He is also a really great soldier and a man of vision. He has a mind that plans broadly, grasps tenaciously, sees clearly.

Well, he sent for me, and, leaving my mother in Devonshire, I hurried to Paris and, without even stopping for déjeûner, to his room at the War Office.

Although I had spent all my holidays in France, I had never seen him before, as he had been on foreign service, and I found him to be my beau idéal of a French General--tall, spare, hawk-like, a fierce dynamic person.

He eyed me keenly, greeted me coldly, and observed--"Since your father is spilt milk, as the English say, it is useless to cry over him."

"Now," continued he, after this brief exordium, "you are a Frenchman, the son of a Frenchman. Are you going to renounce your glorious birth-right and live in England, or are you going to be worthy of your honoured name?"

I replied that I was born a Frenchman, and that I should live and die a Frenchman.

"Good," said my uncle. "In that case you will have to do your military service. . . . Do it at once, and do it as I shall direct. . . .

"Someday I am going to be the master-builder in consolidating an African Empire for France, and I shall need tools that will not turn in my hand. . . . Tools on which I can rely absolutely. . . . If you have ambition, if you are a man, obey me and follow me. Help me, and I will make you. . . . Fail me, and I will break you. . . ."

I stared and gaped like the imbecile that I sometimes choose to appear.

My uncle rose from his desk and paced the room. Soon I was forgotten, I think, as he gazed upon his splendid Vision of the future, rather than on his splendid Nephew of the present.

"France . . . France . . ." he murmured. "A mighty Empire . . . Triumphant over her jealous greedy foes. . . . "England dominates all the east of Africa, but what of the rest--from Egypt to the Atlantic, from Tangier to the Gulf? . . . Morocco, the Sahara, the Soudan, all the vast teeming West . . .

"Algeria we have, Tunisia, and corners here and there. . . . It is not enough. . . . It is nothing. . . ."

I coughed and looked more imbecile.

"Menaced France," he continued, "with declining birthrate and failing man-power . . . Germany only awaiting The Day. . . . Africa, an inexhaustible reservoir of the finest fighting material in the world. The Sahara--with irrigation, an inexhaustible reservoir of food. . . ."

It was lunch-time, and I realized that I too needed irrigation and would like to approach an inexhaustible reservoir of food. If he were going to send me to the Sahara, I would go at once. I looked intelligent, and murmured:

"Oh, rather, Uncle!"

"France must expand or die," he continued. And I felt that I was just like France in that respect.

"The Soudan," he went on, "could be made a very Argentine of corn and cattle, a very Egypt of cotton--and ah! those Soudanese! What soldiers for France! . . .

"The Bedouin must be tamed, the Touareg broken, the Senussi won over. . . . There is where we want trained emissaries--France's secret ambassadors at work among the tribes . . .

"Shall the West come beneath the Tri-couleur of France, or the Green Banner of Pan-Islamism? . . ."

At the moment I did not greatly care. The schemes of irrigation and food-supply interested me more. Corn and cattle . . . suitably prepared, and perhaps a little soup, fish and chicken too. . . .

"We must have safe Trans-Saharan Routes; and then Engineering and Agricultural Science shall turn the desert to a garden--France's great kitchen-garden. France's orchard and cornfield. And the sun's very rays shall be harnessed that their heat may provide France with the greatest power-station in the world. . . ."

"Oh, yes, Uncle," I said. Certainly France should have the sun's rays if I might have lunch.

"But conquest first! Conquest by diplomacy. . . . Divide and rule--that Earth's poorest and emptiest place may become its richest and fullest--and that France may triumph. . . ."

Selfishly I thought that if my poorest and emptiest place could soon become the richest and fullest, I should triumph. . . .

"Now, Boy," concluded my uncle, ceasing his swift pacing, and impaling me with a penetrating stare, "I will try you, and I will give you such a chance to become a Marshal of France as falls to few. . . . Listen. Go to the Headquarters of the military division of the arrondissement in which you were born, show your papers, and enlist as a Volontaire. You will then have to serve for only one year instead of the three compulsory for the ordinary conscript--because you are the son of a widow, have voluntarily enlisted before your time, and can pay the Volontaire's fee of 1,500 francs. . . . I will see that you are posted to the Blue Hussars, and you will do a year in the ranks. You will never mention my name to a soul, and you will be treated precisely as any other private soldier. . . .

"If you pass out with high marks at the end of the period, come to me, and I will see that you go to Africa with a commission in the Spahis, and your foot will be on the ladder. . . . There, learn Arabic until you know it better than your mother-tongue; and learn to know the Arab better than you know yourself. . . . Then I can use you!"

"Oh, yes, Uncle," I dutifully responded, as he paused.

"And some day--some day--I swear it--you will be one of France's most valuable and valued servants, leading a life of the deepest interest, highest usefulness and greatest danger. . . . You will be tried as a cavalryman, tried as a Spahi officer, tried as my aide-de-camp, tried as an emissary, a negotiator, a Secret-Service officer, and will get such a training as shall fit you to succeed me--and I shall be a Marshal of France--and Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General of the great African Empire of France. . . .

"But--fail in any way, at any one step or stage of your career, and I have done with you. . . . Be worthy of my trust, and I will make you one of France's greatest servants. . . . And, mind, Boy--you will have to ride alone, on the road that I shall open to you. . . ." He fell silent.

His fierce and fanatical face relaxed, a sweet smile changed it wholly, and he held out his hand.

"Would you care to lunch with me, my boy?" he said kindly.

"Er--lunch, Uncle?" I replied. "Thank you--yes, I think I could manage a little lunch perhaps. . . ."