ly all are
doomed to poverty and hunger.

But that remainder has but one soul, which has taken refuge in the
spacious soul of its king. Not a murmur, not a word of reproach! But
yesterday a town of thirty thousand inhabitants received the order to
forsake its white houses, its churches, its ancient streets and
squares, the scene of a light-hearted and industrious life. The thirty
thousand inhabitants, women and children and old men, set forth to
seek an uncertain refuge in a neighbouring city, which is threatened
almost as directly as their own and which to-morrow, it may be, must
in its turn set forth, but whither none can say, for the country is so
small that its boundaries are quickly reached, its shelter soon
exhausted.

No matter: they obey in silence and one and all approve and bless
their sovereign. He did what had to be done, what every one in his
place would have done; and, though they are all suffering as no
people has suffered since the barbarous invasions of the earliest
ages, they know that he suffers more than any of them, for in him all
their sorrows find a goal; in him they are reflected and enhanced.
They do not even harbour the idea that they might have been saved by a
sacrifice of honour. They draw no distinction between duty and
destiny. To them that duty, with its frightful consequences, seems as
inevitable as a natural force against which we cannot even dream of
struggling, so great is it and so invincible.

3

Here is an example of the collective bravery of nameless heroes, an
ingenuous and almost unconscious courage, which rivals and at times
exceeds the most exalted deeds in legend and history, for since the
days of the great martyrs men have never suffered death more simply
for a simple idea.

And, if amid the anguish of our struggle it were seemly to speak of
aught but tears and lamentations, we should find a magnificent
consolation in the spectacle of the unexpected heroism that suddenly
surrounds us on every side. It may well be said that never in the
memory of mankind have men sacrificed their lives with such zest, such
self-abnegation, such enthusiasm; and that the immortal virtues which
to this day have uplifted and preserved the flower of the human race
have never shone more brilliantly, never manifested greater power,
energy or youth.

* * * * *

THE HOSTAGE CITIES

III

THE HOSTAGE CITIES

1

Thanks to the heroism of the