A DIVISION EN REPOS
INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE CO., INC.
It is these laughing, playing, seemingly care-free soldiers who are the spirit of the war. Relieved from the tense struggle of life and death for a brief rest, their joyous nature blossoms forth in reaction from the serious affairs of their day’s work.
THERE is nothing that so brings out the best in a man as to fight against terrific odds, to struggle in a losing fight with the knowledge that only by superhuman effort can the odds be equaled or turned. To work for an ideal is a wonderfully inspiring thing, but when the battle necessitates the risking or the sacrificing of home, happiness, and life it brings to the surface in those who persevere characteristics which lie dormant or concealed.
An ideal must be worth while when millions of men gladly risk their all for its attainment, and those men who risk and sacrifice must have returned to them something for what they give. Whatever sort of creature he is on the surface, the fire test, if a man passes it and is not shrivelled in its all-consuming flame, must develop in him certain latent and hitherto buried attributes which are fit to greet the light of day. If he be lacking in worthy human instincts, the flame will destroy him, but if he passes through the test, he emerges a better man—how much better depends on the individual. At least, having once seen the ideal, he has something now for which to live and strive.
THE world, judging from what it saw on the surface, flatly declared that France could never stand up under the strain; but what has happened has proved how little of the real worth of a nation or of a man is ever visible on the surface. There must always come the test, the fire which burns off the mask, the false surface beneath which mankind ever hides, and brings forth what is concealed—good or bad. The bad is swept away and the good survives.
The French are a temperamental people, and consequently are most easily affected by circumstances. In former times the mass of the people were inclined to be demonstrative, insincere, somewhat selfish, and rather egotistical. These characteristics could never pass the tests, and now the true spirit of France, the Phœnix, is rising from the ashes of the past a freed and glorified being, radiant in the joy of accomplishment. From the torture she has endured, an understanding of the feelings and desires of others must be born which will banish the taint of selfishness forever. Those who do things are never egotistical—they have no time to talk, and France has been doing things these past years. Those who rub elbows with the elementals and sacrifice for each other and a cause can never be insincere again. And what harm is there in demonstration? The bad characteristics removed, this becomes merely an effervescence, a bubbling over of a joyous, unrestrained nature—Ponce de Leon’s true fountain of perpetual youth.
The difference between the men who have served at the front and either seen or felt great suffering, and those who have not, is most marked. One evening I was in an abri where some new recruits were wrangling over unimportant things, and showing their selfish character in every speech and act, when a desperately wounded man was brought in. After serving for some time in the trenches he had been given a few days’ leave to see his family. He went back happily, thinking of the wife and the little children he was soon to see again. Having left the third-line trenches, he was walking through the woods down the boyau which leads to the outer world, when a shell broke overhead. The brancardiers patched him up and brought him in with his head bound so that his eyes and mouth alone were visible. The doctor handed him a cup of Pinard and a cigarette, neither of which would he touch until he had offered it to the rest of us. I picked up his helmet which he had put down for an instant, although his eye never left it. There was a hole in it through which I could have rolled a golf ball.