I remember that one day in the year 1914, he was training Georges
Carpentier, who was to meet some negro heavy-weight or other. The
disproportion in the strength of the two men struck my friends and me
as rather alarming; and we took the champion of the world aside and
begged him not to hit too hard and to spare our little instructor as
much as he could. That good fellow Carpentier, who is full of
chivalrous gentleness, promised to do what we asked; but after the
first round he came back to us and said:

"I can't let him off just as lightly as I should like. The little chap
is too plucky and too sensitive; and I have to hit out in earnest.
Besides, he overheard you and what he says is, 'Never mind what the
gentlemen say; they are much too considerate and are always afraid of
my getting smashed up. There's no fear of that. You go for me hard,
else we sha'n't be doing good work.'"


5

"Good work." That is evidently what he did down at the front and what
all of them there are doing. It is indeed fine work, the most glorious
that a man can perform, to die like that for a cause whose triumph he
will not behold, for benefits which he does not reap and which will
accrue solely to his fellow-men whom he will never see again. For,
apart from those benefits, like so many other men, like almost all the
others, he had nothing to gain and nothing to lose by this war. All
that he possessed in the world was the strength of his two arms; and
that strength finds a country everywhere.