a law and a command to every thinking being that he should give
himself wholly for the general and final good. Thence comes the grave
satisfaction of those who devote themselves, of those who die, in the
cause of life, in the thought of a sacrifice not useless. 'Tell ----
that if fate strikes down the best, there is no injustice; those who
survive will be the better men. You do not know the things that are
taught by him who falls. I do know.' And even more complete is the
sacrifice when the relinquishment of life, when the renunciation of
self, means the sacrifice of what was dearer than self, and would have
been a life's joy to serve. There was the 'flag of art, the flag of
science,' that the boy loved and had begun to carry--with what a thrill
of pride and faith! Let him learn to fall without regrets. 'It is enough
for him to know that the flag will yet be carried.'

A simple, a common obedience to the duty at hand is the practical
conclusion of that high Indian wisdom when illusions are past. Not to
retreat into the solitude, not to retire into the inaction, that he has
known and prized; to fight at the side of his brothers, in his own rank,
in his own place, with open eyes, without hope of glory or of gain, and
because such is the law: this is the commandment of the god to the
warrior Arjuna, who had doubted whether he were right in turning away
from the Absolute to take part in the evil dream of war. 'The law for
each is that he should fulfil the functions determined by his own state
and being. Let every man accept action, since he shares in that nature
the methods of which make action necessary.' Plainly, it is for Arjuna
to bend his bow among the other Kshettryas. The young Frenchman had not
doubted. But it will be seen by his letters how, in the horror of
carnage, as in the tedious and patient duties of the mine and the
trench, he too had kept his eyes upon eternal things.

I would not insist unduly upon this union of thought. He had hardly
gained, through a few extracts from the _Ramayana_, a glimpse of the
august thought of ancient Asia. Yet, with all the modern shades of
ideas, with all the very French precision of form, the soul that is
revealed in these letters, like that of Amiel, of Michelet, of Tolstoi,
of Shelley, shows certain profound analogies with the tender and
mystical genius of the Indies. Strange is that affinity, bearing witness
as it does not only to his profound need of the Universal and the