he had always taken care of his health, not even from
thinking about it, but simply because he was told, and that he was one
of those who pass from childhood to manhood without any shock of being a
man. In the row in front of him there was a very slight and vivid little
Jew, of the sort that is a tailor and a Socialist. By one of those
accidents that make real life so unlike anything else, he was the one
of the company who seemed especially devout. Behind these stiff or
sensitive boys were ranged the ranks of their mothers and fathers, with
knots and bunches of their little brothers and sisters.

The children kicked their little legs, wriggled about the seats, and
gaped at the arched roof while their mothers were on their knees praying
their own prayers, and here and there crying. The gray clouds of
rain outside gathered, I suppose, more and more; for the deep church
continuously darkened. The lads in front began to sing a military hymn
in odd, rather strained voices; I could not disentangle the words, but
only one perpetual refrain; so that it sounded like

Sacrarterumbrrar pour la patrie,
Valdarkararump pour la patrie.

Then this ceased; and silence continued, the coloured windows growing
gloomier and gloomier with the clouds. In the dead stillness a child
started crying suddenly and incoherently. In a city far to the north a
French diplomatist and a German aristocrat were talking.

I will not make any commentary on the thing that could blur the outline
of its almost cruel actuality. I will not talk nor allow any one else to
talk about "clericalism" and "militarism." Those who talk like that are
made of the same mud as those who call all the angers of the unfortunate
"Socialism." The women who were calling in the gloom around me on God
and the Mother of God were not "clericalists"; or, if they were,
they had forgotten it. And I will bet my boots the young men were not
"militarists"—quite the other way just then. The priest made a
short speech; he did not utter any priestly dogmas (whatever they are),
he uttered platitudes. In such circumstances platitudes are the only
possible things to say; because they are true. He began by saying that
he supposed a large number of them would be uncommonly glad not to go.
They seemed to assent to this particular priestly dogma with even
more than their alleged superstitious credulity. He said that war was
hateful, and that we all hated it; but that "in all things