ir and human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to
each man individually that he could not shoot. One conscript, at
least, has told his story of his awakening, and how curious he thought
the rifle there beside him in his pit, how he took it on his knees
to examine. Then, as his memory of its purpose grew clearer, he
dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of joyful horror at
the crime escaped, to look more closely at the men he was to have
assassinated. "Brave types," he thought, they looked for such
a fate. The summoning rocket never flew. Below, the men did not
fall into ranks again, but sat by the roadside, or stood in groups
talking, discussing with a novel incredulity the ostensible causes
of the war. "The Emperor!" said they; and "Oh, nonsense! We're
civilized men. Get some one else for this job! . . . Where's the
coffee?"

The officers held their own horses, and talked to the men frankly,
regardless of discipline. Some Frenchmen out of the rifle-pits came
sauntering down the hill. Others stood doubtfully, rifles still in
hand. Curious faces scanned these latter. Little arguments sprang
as: "Shoot at us! Nonsense! They're respectable French citizens."
There is a picture of it all, very bright and detailed in the
morning light, in the battle gallery amidst the ruins at old Nancy,
and one sees the old-world uniform of the "soldier," the odd caps
and belts and boots, the ammunition-belt, the water-bottle, the
sort of tourist's pack the men carried, a queer elaborate equipment.
The soldiers had awakened one by one, first one and then another.
I wonder sometimes whether, perhaps, if the two armies had come
awake in an instant, the battle, by mere habit and inertia, might
not have begun. But the men who waked first, sat up, looked
about them in astonishment, had time to think a little. . . .

Section 7

Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears.

Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit
and exalted, capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible,
incapable of doing what had hitherto been irresistible, happy,
hopeful, unselfishly energetic, rejected altogether the supposition
that this was merely a change in the blood and material texture of
life. They denied the bodies God had given them, as once the Upper
Nile savages struck out their canine teeth, because these made
them like the beasts. They declared that this was the coming of a
spirit, and nothing else would