Some one has said, and wisely, that what most pleases us when perusing a book is to find the author corroborating our own thoughts,—giving voice to our unborn sentiments—providing us with material for comparison. If this be true, then there is no reason why "My ·75" should not live on forever.
Further than a really great literary talent, this book reveals the profound and generous soul of the entire "Jeunesse Française" ready to sacrifice itself without counting, for the highest ideal that ever inflamed a people.
The admirable patience, the great good humour, the intelligent cleverness and heroic devotion together with the plain, simple courage, all the deep-rooted, undreamed of qualities of the French Race, are to be found within its covers, making it a monument to stoic virtue.
How we love them, all the "Camarades"—Hutin, Deprès, Bréjard, Lieutenant Hély d'Oissel—and the others—the four million others who on August second, nineteen hundred and fourteen, stood willing, ready, to perish for their ideal, glad to offer their lives with a smile.
The dedication to "Captain Bernard de Brissoult, whose glorious death facing the enemy, drew from eyes burned by powder and long vigils, the terrible tears of soldiers," is one of the most touching things I know, and I should like to feel that all those of my compatriots who close the book have shed a tear of admiration and regret for Paul Lintier, who died for France, March sixteenth, nineteen sixteen, in the twenty-third year of his age.
New York,
July, Nineteen hundred and seventeen.
I. MOBILIZATION
War! Every one knows it, every one says so. It would be madness not to believe it. And yet, in spite of all, we hardly feel excited; we don't believe it! War, the Great European War—no, it can't be true!