Sedan, the fragment seems, in a retrospective way, an implacable
accusation against those who deceived themselves about the
Hohenzollern country by false liberalism or a softening of the brain.

Unswerved by popular ideas, by the artificial, by the trifles
of treaties, by the chimera of theories, by the charlatanism
of bulletins, by the nonsense of romantic fiction, by the
sentimentalities of vain chivalry, Ardant du Picq, triumphant in
history, is even more the incomparable master in the field of his
laborious days and nights, the field of war itself. Never has a
clearer vision fathomed the bloody mysteries of the formidable test of
war. Here man appears as his naked self. He is a poor thing when he
succumbs to unworthy deeds and panics. He is great under the impulse
of voluntary sacrifice which transforms him under fire and for honor
or the salvation of others makes him face death.

The sound and complete discussions of Ardant du Picq take up, in a
poignant way, the setting of every military drama. They envelop in a
circle of invariable phenomena the apparent irregularity of combat,
determining the critical point in the outcome of the battle. Whatever
be the conditions, time or people, he gives a code of rules which will
not perish. With the enthusiasm of Pascal, who should have been a
soldier, Ardant du Picq has the preeminent gift of expressing the
infinite in magic words. He unceasingly opens an abyss under the feet
of the reader. The whole metaphysics of war is contained therein and
is grasped at a single glance.

He shows, weighed in the scales of an amazing exactitude, the normal
efficiency of an army; a multitude of beings shaken by the most
contradictory passions, first desiring to save their own skins and yet