]
Only austere love of duty can sustain a man at such a height. A
schoolmaster-sergeant of Lyon, Philippe Gonnard, voices it to a friend
inclined to pity him: he was ill enough to get his freedom, but wished,
nevertheless, to keep at his post until he was killed: "I intend to stay
at the front.... Patriotism for me is a passion. Does that mean that I
am happy here far from all I love? You do not think that and I have
often said I am not, in prose and verse. But from now until peace, no
man of heart can be happy. If I came back, I should be still less happy,
because instead of being dissatisfied with my lot, I should be
dissatisfied with myself."
[Sidenote: Strong will and nobility of soul.]
More or less consciously, this was the rock bottom of the character of
the soldier of France after three and a half years of war: "Will always
on the stretch, anguish conquered, melancholy transformed into nobility
of soul--as long as literature does not portray these essential traits
of the soldier," says one of our best author-combatants, "all it creates
will only be artificial and bear no relation to reality."
[Sidenote: "No matter, it is for France."]
"No matter, it is for France!" says the wounded soldier to the comrades
bending over him, and if it is during an attack he tells them not to
stop, not to carry him away "because it is no longer worth while," but
to continue without him the noble work for which he is offering his
life. Let a chaplain bring him divine help in time and he will die more
than resigned, joyous and radiant in the faith of his childhood,
bewailing his sins and kissing the crucifix like the French of the
Middle Ages.
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