the question.

Rochas made no reply; he shrugged his shoulders disapprovingly and
resumed his round among the company streets while waiting for taps to
sound. Jean, stiff and sore after his day's march, went and sat down a
little way from Maurice, whose murmured words fell indistinctly upon
his unlistening ear, for he, too, had vague, half formed reflections
of his own that were stirring sluggishly in the recesses of his muddy,
torpid mind.

Maurice was a believer in war in the abstract; he considered it one of
the necessary evils, essential to the very existence of nations. This
was nothing more than the logical sequence of his course in embracing
those theories of evolution which in those days exercised such a
potent influence on our young men of intelligence and education. Is
not life itself an unending battle? Does not all nature owe its being
to a series of relentless conflicts, the survival of the fittest, the
maintenance and renewal of force by unceasing activity; is not death a
necessary condition to young and vigorous life? And he remembered the
sensation of gladness that had filled his heart when first the thought
occurred to him that he might expiate his errors by enlisting and
defending his country on the frontier. It might be that France of the
plebiscite, while giving itself over to the Emperor, had not desired
war; he himself, only a week previously, had declared it to be a
culpable and idiotic measure. There were long discussions concerning
the right of a German prince to occupy the throne of Spain; as the
question gradually became more and more intricate and muddled it
seemed as if everyone must be wrong, no one right; so that it was
impossible to tell from which side the provocation came, and the only
part of the entire business that was clear to the eyes of all was the