[CHAPTER XII]
L'ENVOI
"La Mort n'est rien,
Vive la tombe,
Quand le pays en sort vivant,
En avant!"
Surely no one will deny to M. Paul Déroulède, that eminent and talented French homme-de-lettres, to whose inspiring enthusiasm these lines are attributable, the right of his assertion that Death in the conditions which he mentions is a negligible quantity? Supreme as has been the sacrifice of those well-nigh countless scores of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, who now "in glory shine," bitter too and crushing as undoubtedly is the sense of void occasioned by their absence beyond recall to those of their relatives and friends who remain, "where is Death's sting?" it may well be asked, "where, Grave, thy victory?" when the Country, struggling for all that she holds most dear, finally emerges triumphant, renascent, from the darkest hours of her existence; for underlying all, there is in this straightforward challenge a tinge of pride unquenchable, a ring of scorn unmistakable.
Granted then the truth of this dogma, granted too that nothing is more "dulce et decorum" than "pro patria mori," one cannot but bear in mind the fact also that Death is not infrequently a happy form of release from some lamentably pitiable condition of mind or body to another and altogether brighter degree of existence. "La douleur est un siécle, et la mort un moment;" one may even assume that the act of "passing away" is comparable to that merciful dawn of returning consciousness, to which the dreamer wakes from the vividly realistic, albeit imaginary, torture of some agonising nightmare. For who at one time or another of his or her enigmatic existence has not experienced this imaginary torture, of which the crazy sequence of headlong unreasoning realities wracks in topsy turvy torment the momentarily unbalanced brain, until in a frenzy of despair and faced with some climax, unprecedented and unparalleled, the dreamer wakes, bathed in profuse and clammy perspiration, breathless and bewildered, yet infinitely grateful to an all-powerful and protecting Deity that imaginings of so cruel and fantastic a conception should prove to be but phantoms of the night?
Yet of all the myriad atoms of trivial humanity who have survived the nightmare of Armageddon-up-to-date, what is the proportion of such who can honestly say that the life to which we have been restored is either brimful of promise or bright indeed with prospect? "Forward" undoubtedly must be the watchword; "en avant;" but whither?