"On the left wing we have progressed. On the right wing we have repulsed violent counter-attacks. On the front the situation remains without change." Where are our men? What troops are meant? What Generals? Nothing is told of such things. The veil of anonymity shrouds great actions, a barrier of impenetrable mystery protects the secret of the operations.
Great Things Done Simply.
Our soldiers have endured every hardship, braved every danger, never knowing whether each dawning day was their last, yet the cleverest manoeuvring, the most gallant feats, are obliterated, effaced, lost, in the calculated colorlessness of an enigmatic report. But that sacrifice also have they made. To be at the post assigned to them, to play a great or infinitesimal role in the common work, is the only reward they desire. Can it be that the disease of individualism is a thing of yesterday? The soldier of 1914 has cured us of it. Never have disinterestedness and modesty been pushed so far.
Let us say it in a word: Never have great things been done so simply.
But he knows why he is fighting. It is not for the ambition of a sovereign or the impatience of his heir, for the arrogance of a caste of country squires or the profit of a firm of merchants. No; he fights for the land where he was born and where his dead sleep; he fights to free his invaded country and give her back her lost provinces, for her past, struck to the heart by the shells that bombarded the Cathedral of Rheims; he fights so that his children may have the right to think, speak, and feel in French, so that there may still be in the world a French race, which the world needs. For this war of destruction is aimed at the destruction of our race, and our race has been moved to its depths. It has risen as one man and assembled together; it has called up from its remotest history all its energy, in order to reincarnate them in the person of him whose duty is to defend the race today; it has inspired in him the valor of the knights of old, the endurance of the laborer bending over his furrow, the modesty of the old masters who made of our cathedrals masterpieces of anonymity, the honesty of the bourgeois, the patience of humble folk, the consciousness of duty which mothers teach to their children, all those virtues which, developed from one generation to another, become a tradition, the tradition of an industrious people, made strong by a long past and made to endure. It is these qualities, all of them together, which we admire in the soldier of 1914, the complete and superb type of the entire race.
A Holy Intoxication.
When it has such an aim, the noblest of all, war is sublime; all who go into it are as if transfigured. It exalts, expands, and purifies souls. On approaching the battlefield a holy intoxication, a holy happiness, takes possession of those for whom has been reserved the supreme joy of braving death for their country. Death is everywhere, but they do not believe in it any more. And when, on certain mornings, to the sound of cannon that mix their rumblings with mystic voices of bells, in the devastated church which cries to the heavens through every breach opened in its walls, the Chaplain blesses the regiment that he will accompany the next minute to the firing line, every head will be bent at the same time and all will feel on their brows the breath of God.
Alas! the beauty of the struggle does not hide from me its sadness. How many went away, full of youth and hope, to return no more. How many have fallen already without seeing realized what they so ardently desired; sowers they, who to make the land fertile have watered it with their blood, yet will not see the harvest.
But at least their sacrifice will not have been in vain. They have brought reconciliation to their divided country, they have made her become conscious of herself again, they have made her learn enthusiasm once again. They have not seen victory, but they have merited it. Honor to them, struck down first, and glory to those who will avenge them! We enfold them both in our devotion to the same sacred cause.
Would that a new era might dawn, thanks to them, that a new world might be born in which we might breathe more freely, where injustices centuries old might be made good, where France, arising from long humiliation, might resume her rank and destiny. Then, in that cured, vivified France, what an awakening, what a renewal, what a sap, what a magnificent flowering there would be! This will be thy work, soldier of 1914! To you we shall owe this resurrection of our beloved country. And later on, and always, in everything beautiful and good that may be done among us, in the creations of our poets and the discoveries of our savants, in the thousand forms of national activity, in the strength of our young men and the grace of our young women, in all that will be the France of tomorrow, there will be, soldier so brave and so simple in your greatness, a little of your heroic soul!