The Soul of the War by Philip Gibbs
page 27 of 449 (06%)
page 27 of 449 (06%)
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law. Their white faces had eyes like live coals. They thrust long thin
fingers through shaggy hair and spoke passionate orations nose to nose. Their sluttish women shrieked with mirth and gave their kisses to the leader of the gang, who had the face of Christ as painted by Ary Scheffer. It was in this interesting place, on the very velvet cushions where I used to sit to watch the company, that Jaurès was killed on the eve of the war. The veteran orator of French socialism, the man who could stir the passions of the mob--as I had seen more than once--so that at his bidding they would declare war against all the powers of Government, was struck down as he sat with his back to an open window divided from the street by a thin curtain. The young assassin --a patriot he called himself--had been excited to an hysteria of hate for a man who had tried to weaken the military power of France by opposing the measure for a three years' service. It was the madness of war which had touched his brain, and although Jaurès had called upon the Socialists of France to march as one man in defence of "La Patrie," this young neurasthenic made him the first victim of that enormous sacrifice of blood which has since reeked up to God. Jaurès, an honest man, perhaps, in spite of all his theatrical appeals to mob passion--honest at least in his desire to make life more tolerable for the sweated workers of France--was mortally wounded by those shots through the window blind, and the crimson cushions of his seat were dyed with deeper stains. 8 |
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