. How many are the
crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the
word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is
eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many
nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.

Those are your enemies. All those people whose childish and odiously
ridiculous disputes you hear snarling above you--"It wasn't me that
began, it was you!"--"No, it wasn't me, it was you!"--"Hit me
then!"--"No, you hit me!"--those puerilities that perpetuate the
world's huge wound, for the disputants are not the people truly
concerned, but quite the contrary, nor do they desire to have done with
it; all those people who cannot or will not make peace on earth; all
those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient state of
things and find or invent excuses for it--they are your enemies!

They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day who
are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor dupes
hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are your
enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their names,
whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the heaven
and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them once for all,
and be mindful for ever!

* * * * *

"They will say to you," growled a kneeling man who stooped with his two
bands in the earth and shook his shoulders like a mastiff, 'My friend,
you have been a wonderful hero!' I don't want them to say it!

"Heroes? Some sort of extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been
murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We shall
do it again with all our might, because it's of great importance to
follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it. The act of
slaughter is always ignoble; sometimes necessary, but always ignoble.
Yes, hard and persistent murderers, that's what we've been. But don't
talk to me about military virtue because I've killed Germans."

"Nor to me," cried another in so loud a voice that no one could have
replied to him even had he dared; "nor to me, because I've saved the
lives of Frenchmen! Why, we might as well set fire to houses for the
sake of the excellence of life-saving!"

"It would be a crime to exhibit the fine side of war, even if there
were one!" murmured one of the somber soldiers.

The first man continued. "Th