ction, or any backward return.

Jacques See was the most blazingly in favor of the war. This generous
young Jew had espoused all the passions the spirit of France contained.
All through Europe his cousins in Israel espoused like him the causes
and the ideas of their adopted countries. Moreover, according to their
method, they even had a tendency toward an exaggeration of whatever they
adopted. This fine fellow, with ardent but rather heavy voice and look,
with his regular features as if marked with a stamp imposed, was more
pronounced in his convictions than was needful, and violent in
contradiction. According to him, all that was necessary was a crusade
made by the democracies to deliver the nations and extinguish war. Four
years of the philanthropic slaughterhouse had not convinced him. He was
one of those who will never accept the flat contradiction of facts. He
had a twofold pride, the secret pride of his race, which race he wished
to rehabilitate, and his pride personal that wanted to prove itself
right. He wished this all the more because he was not entirely sure of
it. His sincere idealism served as a screen against exacting instincts
too long suppressed and to a need for action and adventure, which was no
less sincere.

Antoine Naude, he too, was for the war. But that was because he could
not do otherwise. This big honest young _bourgeois_, with his rosy
cheeks, placid and keen, who had a short breath and rolled his _r_ with
the pretty grace of the provinces of the Centre, contemplated with a
quiet smile the enthusiastic transports of his friend See; or else he
knew how on occasion to make him climb a tree with a careless word;--but
the big, lazy fellow took precious care not to follow him up! What is
the use of getting in a sweat for or against what does not depend upon
ourselves? It is only in the tragedies that one finds the heroic and
loquacious conflict between duty and one's pleasure. When we have no
choice, we do our duty without wasting words. It was no jollier on that
account. Naude neither admired nor recriminated. His good sense told him
that, once the train started and the war in motion, it was necessary to
roll along with it; there was no other position to take. As for
searching after the responsibilities, that was merely time lost. When I
am forced to fight it gives me a gay outlook, a pretty consolation, to
know that I might have not fought--if things had really been ... what
they haven't been!