We are mercenaries no longer—those hirelings for murder, who once sold their blood for money down to all and sundry. We are gladiators no longer—slaves who enact the drama of dying as an exciting spectacle for the entertainment of the rich, and for the lust of their eyes. It is to our native land we took our oath. And if it must be, we are resolved to die as citizens, to die in the full consciousness and full responsibility for our acts.
What will the next few days have in store for us?
Not one of us has probably ever, with his own eyes, seen a field of battle. But we have heard about it from others, and we have read in books of other men what a battlefield looked like in 1870-71, and, as though with our own eyes, we have watched the shells shattering human bodies. And another thing we know is that forty years ago in spite of inferior guns and rifles, over a hundred and twenty thousand dead stayed behind on the field of honor. What percentage of the living will modern warfare claim? Armies are being marshalled vaster than the world has ever seen. Germany alone can put six million soldiers in the field; France as many. Then the war of '70-'71 was nothing more than a long-drawn affair of outposts! My brain reels when I try to visualize these masses—starting to march against one another; I seem to choke for breath.
Then are we a breed of men other than our fathers?
Is the reason because we only have one life to lose? And do we cling so passionately to this life? Isn't our native land worth more than this scrap of life?
There probably won't be many among us who believe in the Resurrection, who believe that our mangled bodies will rise again in new splendor. Nor do we believe that our Father in Heaven will have pleasure in our murderous doings, that in that better world He will regard us other than as our brothers' murderers. But we bend our heads before iron Necessity. The Fatherland has called us, and we, as loyal sons, obey the command there is no evading, submissively.... From today onward we belong to our native land, so the Major shouted a minute ago as he read out the articles of war.
And it's going to be the real thing this time.
The Sergeant-Major has already read the roll and checked it. We are already told off in fours. Now, in a long column, we are marching across the barrack-yard, for this very day we are ordered to doff our civilian dress, and don our new kit. This very day we have got to become soldiers.
Things are moving apace with us now.