There are going to be many in this great campaign who will drop
exhausted from the ranks--many who, under cover of night, when the
sentinel is drowsy at his post, will slip out into the darkness, weary
of the fatigue, regardless of the consequences--a deserter from the
cause that is so ill-understood. There are going to be many who,
through a passing village where all is peace and contentment, will
hear the tempting whisper of mutiny. What is the good of it all--to
what does it lead, this endless forced march towards a vague
encounter with the enemy who are never to be seen? If only they might
pitch tents there and then--there and then dig trenches, make
positions, occupy heights--put the rifle to the shoulder and
fire--into hell if need be. But no--this endless, toilsome marching,
marching--always onward, yet never at the journey's end.

Who blames them if they fall by the way? Even the sergeant of the
division, passing their crumpled bodies by the roadside, becomes a
hypocrite if he kicks them into an obedience of their orders. In his
heart he might well wish to drop out as they have done. Who blames
them, too, if they slink off, hiding behind any cover that will
conceal their trembling bodies until the whole army has gone by?--who
blames them if they sham illness, lameness, anything that may be put
forward as an excuse to set them free?--who blames them if a wayside
cottage offers them shelter and, taking it, they leave the other poor
wretches to go on? Who blames them then? No one--no one with a heart
could do so. The great tragedy lies in the fact that they are left
to blame themselves.

And this--this is the way that Nature wages war--a civil war, that
is the worst, the most harrowing of all. She fights her own kith and