the poem fears. The foreboding itself seems to
belong to a barbaric society in which there is a more animal division of
the sexes, in which the male fears to become effeminate if he does not
insist upon his masculinity even to his mother. But this Frenchman has
left barbarism so far behind that he is not afraid of effeminacy; nor
does he need to remind himself that he is a male. There is a philosophy
to which this forgetfulness of masculinity is decadence. According to
that philosophy, man must remember always that he is an animal, a proud
fighting animal like a bull or a cock; and the proudest of all fighting
animals, to be admired at a distance by all women unless he condescends
to desire them, is the officer. No one could be further from such a
philosophy than this Frenchman; he is so far from it that he does not
seem even to be aware of its existence. He hardly mentions the Germans
and never expresses anger against them. The worst he says of them almost
makes one smile at its naive gentleness. 'Unfortunately, contact with
the German race has for ever spoilt my opinion of those people.' They
are to him merely a nation that does not know how to behave. He reminds
one of Talleyrand, who said of Napoleon after one of his rages: 'What a
pity that so great a man should have been so badly brought up.' But
there was malice in that understatement of Talleyrand's; and there is
none in the understatement of this Frenchman. He has no desire for
revenge; his only wish is that his duty were done and that he could
return home to his art and his mother. To the philosophy I have spoken
of that would seem a pitiable state of mind. No one could be less like a
Germanic hero than this French artist; and yet the Germans were in error
when they counted on an easy victory over him and his like, when they
made sure that a conscious barbarism must prevail over an unconscious
civilisation.

These letters reveal to us a new type of soldier, a new type of hero,
almost a new type of man; one who can be brave without any animal
consolations, who can endure without any romantic illusions, and, what
is more, one who can have faith without any formal revelation. For there
is nothing in the letters more interesting than the religion constantly
expressed or implied in them. The writer is not a Catholic. Catholic
fervour on its figurative side, he says, will always leave him cold. He
finds the fervour of Verlaine almost gross. He seems afraid to give a