Besides, during the days of defeat we had just been passing through, what a moving picture of our country had been revealed to us! An army immediately victorious cannot plumb the depths of patriotism. One must have fought, have suffered, and have feared—even if only for a moment—to lose her, in order to understand what one's country really means. She is the whole joy of existence, the embodiment of all our pleasures visible and invisible, and the focus of all our hopes. She alone makes life worth living. All this united and personified in a single suffering being, begotten by the will of millions of individuals—that is France!
In defending her one defends oneself, seeing that she is the sole reason for being, for living. One would prefer to fall dead on the spot rather than see France lost, for that would be worse than death. Every soldier feels this truth, either vaguely, or distinctly and clearly, according to his powers of perception and affection.
And yet, in the camp, these things are never talked of. The reason is that words which, in peace-time, too often veiled by their gross grandiloquence these deeper and finer feelings, would be insupportable now. This passion, for it is a passion, lies deep down in the heart with other sacred and inmost emotions, to give outward expression to which would be almost to profane them.
"Come on, now! Harness! Hook in! We're off."
The rain had soured the men's tempers.
"Now then! Be careful with your horse, can't you? You might have killed us!"
"Untie your horses so that we can get the picket-lines, will you?... All right, damn you, I'll do it myself."
"There's a silly fool! Fine place to tether a colt to—the wheel of an ammunition wagon. He's ripping up the oat-bag. Pull him off, can't you?"