"And there are some who won't come back."
We see several new recruits of the 1916 class who will soon be sent to the front.
"They're pretty boys," says the Member of the Upper House, good-naturedly; "but they're still a bit pale-faced. We must fatten 'em up, we must fatten 'em up!"
An official of the Ministry of War goes up to the Member of the Upper
House, and says:
"The science of military preparedness is still in its beginnings. We're getting clear for it hastily, but it is an organization which requires a long time and which can only have full effect in time of peace. Later, we shall take them from childhood; we shall make good sound soldiers of them, and of good health, morally as well as physically."
Then the band plays; it is closing time, and there is the passion of a military march. A woman cries that it is like drinking champagne to hear it.
The visitors have gone away. I linger to look at the beflagged front of the War Museum, while night is falling. It is the Temple. It is joined to the Church, and resembles it. My thoughts go to those crosses which weigh down, from the pinnacles of churches, the heads of the living, join their two hands together, and close their eyes; those crosses which squat upon the graves in the cemeteries at the front. It is because of all these temples that in the future the sleep-walking nations will begin again to go through the immense and mournful tragedy of obedience. It is because of these temples that financial and industrial tyranny, Imperial and Royal tyranny—of which all they whom I meet on my way are the accomplices or the puppets—will to-morrow begin again to wax fat on the fanaticism of the civilian, on the weariness of those who have come back, on the silence of the dead. (When the armies file through the Arc de Triomphe, who is there will see—and yet they will be plainly visible—that six thousand miles of French coffins are also passing through!) And the flag will continue to float over its prey, that flag stuck into the shadowy front of the War Museum, that flag so twisted by the wind's breath that sometimes it takes the shape of a cross, and sometimes of a scythe!
Judgment is passed in that case. But the vision of the future agitates me with a sort of despair and with a holy thrill of anger.
Ah, there are cloudy moments when one asks himself if men do not deserve all the disasters into which they rush! No—I recover myself—they do not deserve them. But we, instead of saying "I wish" must say "I will." And what we will, we must will to build it, with order, with method, beginning at the beginning, when once we have been as far as that beginning. We must not only open our eyes, but our arms, our wings.
This isolated wooden building, with its back against a wood-pile, and nobody in it——