intelligent nations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, of
appreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful
abyss that separates this life from the life unknown. We were even
almost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers,
that is to say, of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the
only absolute realities--health, physical comfort, an unimpaired body
and, above all, life, the greatest of earthly possessions--for the
sake of an ideal which, like all ideals, is more or less invisible.

And this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because, as
existence grew gentler and men's nerves more sensitive, the means of
destruction by war showed themselves more cruel, ruthless and
irresistible. It seemed more and more probable that no man would ever
again endure the infernal horrors of a battlefield and that, after the
first slaughter, the opposing armies, officers and men alike, all
seized with insuppressible panic, would turn their backs upon one
another, in simultaneous, supernatural affright, and flee from
unearthly terrors exceeding the most monstrous anticipations of those
who had let them loose.


2

To our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed.

We realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incomplete
and inaccurate conception of man's courage. We looked upon it as an
exceptional virtue and one which is the more admired as being also the
rarer the farther we go back in history. Remember, for instance,
Homer's heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes of our day. Study them