But, in another way, how admirable and how great has the French soldier proved himself to be!
The passion of Patriotism, the sheer love of their own country (in the case of the French, more truly "their own" than in the case of the British) has swept through France in a wave of devotion which consumed in its flame, one may almost say, the energies and the treasures of every household. To protect their beautiful land, their divine mistress, from violation by the German hordes was a thing for which all men — artists, literary men and all — were glad to die.
When at Meaux the French army (reorganized and reinforced) broke through the German centre and fell upon Von Kluck's left flank (his right being already threatened by the French Sixth Army), they were surely not men who fought, but spirits rather — many of them almost ghosts, white with the fatigues and privations of a long retreat; but to save their beloved Paris they faced the enemy with a fury that nothing could resist.
A miracle was wrought (talk of Angels at Mons, it was Devils at Meaux), and Germany in that moment was defeated — even though it took two years more to make her acknowledge her defeat.
Think of Lieutenant Pericard who in a trench full of corpses at Bois-brule cried, suddenly entranced, in a loud voice, "Debout les morts!" and in a moment, as it were, the souls of their dead comrades were around his men, inspiring them to victory.
When again at Verdun week after week and month after month the French army endured tine almost hourly mass-attacks of the enemy battalions and the deluge of their shells (eight million shells, it is estimated the Germans threw in ten weeks), it still, though heavily punished, stood solid, and the whole of France stood solid behind it. France never doubted the conclusion; and the conclusion was never doubtful.
We have spoken of `glory,' but the day of ` la gloire ' has departed. France herself has ceased to speak of it — and there can be no better proof than that, of the change that has come over the minds of men .
France has emerged from the War a changed nation. The people who in 1870 made ribald verses and sang cynical songs over the plight of their country are now no more, and France emerges serious, resolute, to the great work which she has before her — of building the great first Democratic State of Europe and becoming the corner-stone of the future European Confederation.
And what shall we say of the German army? (In the moment and merely for the sake of brevity I leave the Belgians, Russians, Italians and Serbians aside.)
When I think of the great German army now scattered over Europe, fighting along that immense line (including the Austrian portion) of some 1,400 miles in extent; when I think of this on the whole so wonderfully goodhearted, genial, sociable people, these regiments of Westphalians, Wurtemburgers, Saxons, Bavarians, Hungarians, these men and boys from the fields and farms of Posen and Pomerania, the forests of Thuringia, the vineyards of the Rhine or the vegetable gardens of the Palatinate, these students from the Universities and scholars from the Technical Schools; plunged in this insane War, fighting in very truth for they know not what, and pouring out their life-blood, like water in obedience to the long-prepared schemes of their rulers — I am seized with an immense pity.