fused anything, either moral support or money, the nerve of war,
has been able to profit by all this progress, to reduce to a formula the
violence which drives forward the attack, to prepare the spy system
which watches over the unarmed foe, to organize even incendiarism, and
to become thus, forged by forty-four years of hatred, the most
formidable tool of destruction that has ever sown ruin and death.

*German Meets Belgian.*

The Germans arrived, with the irresistible impetus of their masses, with
the fury of a tempest, with the roar of thunder, enraged at having been
confronted on their road by that little Belgian Nation which has just
inscribed its name among the first on the roster of heroism. Already the
German chiefs imagined themselves lords of Paris, which they threatened
to reduce to ashes--and which did not tremble.

It was to meet this colossus of war that our little soldier marched
forth. And he made it fall back.

To this new war he brings his old qualities, the qualities of all time.
Courage--let us not speak of that. Can one speak of courage? Just read
the short sentences in the army orders.

Corporal Voituret of the Second Dragoons, mortally wounded on a
reconnoissance, cries: "Vive la France! I die for her! I die happy!"
Private Chabannes of the Eighteenth Chasseurs, unhorsed and wounded,
replies to the Major who asks him why he had not surrendered: "We
Frenchmen never surrender!" And remember those who, mortally wounded,
stick to their posts so as to fight to the end with their men, and those
wounded men who have but one desire--every one of us can vouch for
this--to return to the firing line! And that one who, hopelessly
mutilated, said to me: "It is not being crippled that hurts me; it is
that I shall not be able to see the best part of the thing!" These, and
the others, the thousands of others, shall we speak of their courage?
--what would it mean to speak of their courage?

And the dash of them!--the only criticism to which they lay themselves
open is that they are too fiery, that they do not wait the right moment
for the charge, in order to drive back the enemy at the point of the
bayonet. What spirit! What gayety! All the letters from our soldiers are
overflowing with cheerfulness. Where, for instance, does that nickname
come from applied by them to the enemy--the "Boches"? It comes from
where so many more have come; its author is nobody and everybody; it is
the spontaneous product of th