ummer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into
conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be
brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me.[9] Slavs,
hastening to the aid of your race; Englishmen fighting for honor and
right; intrepid Belgians who dared to oppose the Teutonic colossus, and
defend against him the Thermopylae of the West; Germans fighting to
defend the philosophy and the birthplace of Kant against the Cossack
avalanche; and you, above all, my young compatriots, in whom the
generation of heroes of the Revolution lives again; you, who for years
have confided your dreams to me, and now, on the verge of battle, bid
me a sublime farewell.

Those years of scepticism and gay frivolity in which we in France grew
up are avenged in you; your faith, which is ours, you protect from their
poisonous influence; and with you that faith triumphs on the
battlefield. "A war of revenge" is the cry. Yea! revenge indeed; but in
no spirit of Chauvinism. The revenge of faith against all the egotisms
of the senses and of the spirit--the surrender of self to eternal ideas.

One of the most powerful of the young French novelists--Corporal
X.--writes to me:--

"What are our lives, our books, compared with the magnitude of the
aim? The war of the Revolution against feudalism is beginning anew.
The armies of the Republic will secure the triumph of democracy in
Europe and complete the work of the Convention. We are fighting for
more than our hearths and homes, for the awakening of liberty."
Another of these young people, of noble spirit and pure heart, who
will be, if he lives, the first art critic of our time--Lieutenant
X.:--

"My friend, could you see our Army as I do, you would be thrilled
with admiration for our people, for this noble race. An enthusiasm,
like an outburst of the Marseillaise, thrills them; heroic,
earnest, and even religious. I have seen the three divisions of my
army corps set out; the men of active service first, young men of
twenty marching with firm and rapid steps, without a cry, without a
gesture, like the ephebi of old calmly going to sacrifice. After
them come the reserve, men of twenty-five to thirty years, more
stalwart and more determined, who will reinforce the younger men
and make them irresistible. We, the old men of forty, the fathers
of families, are the base of t