"Oui, it's always the same tale. They wouldn't be able to say in the
drawing-rooms afterwards, 'Tenez, here I am; look at me for a
voluntary engage!'"

"I know a gentleman who enlisted in the aerodromes. He had a fine
uniform--he'd have done better to offer for the
Opera-Comique. What am I saying--'he'd have done better?'
He'd have done a damn sight better, oui. At least he'd have made
other people laugh honestly, instead of making them laugh with the
spleen in it."

"They're a lot of cheap china, fresh painted, and plastered with
ornaments and all sorts of falderals, but they don't go under fire."

"If there'd only been people like those, the Boches would be at
Bayonne."

"When war's on, one must risk his skin, eh, corporal?"

"Yes," said Bertrand, "there are some times when duty and danger are
exactly the same thing; when the country, when justice and liberty
are in danger, it isn't in taking shelter that you defend them. On
the contrary, war means danger of death and sacrifice of life for
everybody, for everybody; no one is sacred. One must go for it,
upright, right to the end, and not pretend to do it in a fanciful
uniform. These services at the bases, and they're necessary, must be
automatically guaranteed by the really weak and the really old."

"Besides, there are too many rich and influential people who have
shouted, 'Let us save France!--and begin by saving ourselves!' On