em to me to amount to little. Like every Frenchman,

[Illustration: FREDERIC HARRISON. _See Page_ 192]

[Illustration: YVES GUYOT. _See Page_ 194]

I am given up wholly to the task of the hour; all my interest is in
our generous and admirable army, and my sole concern is to take part,
however modestly, in the work of the nation. True, a thousand memories
and reflections crowd my mind; the notion of pausing to express them in
writing had not occurred to me, but it would be ungracious in me to
decline your kind invitation. Please omit from the ideas I throw on
paper whatever seems to you to be lacking in interest.

*Mephistopheles Appears.*

In the presence of such events as are passing before our eyes, how can
we keep our minds free? We have to say to ourselves: "See what has come
of that philosophic, artistic, scientific development whose grandeur and
idealistic character all the world has proclaimed!" "That is what the
infernal cur had in his belly," said Faust as he saw the dog which was
playing at his side change into Mephistopheles. What! Having declared
the morality of Plato and Aristotle inadequate and mediocre, having
preached duty for duty's sake, having established the unconditioned
supremacy of moral worth, the royalty of the intellect, to end by
officially declaring that a signed engagement is but a scrap of paper,
and that juridic or moral laws do not count if they incommode us and if
we are the strongest! Having given to the world marvelous music, in
which the purest and deepest aspirations seem to be heard; having raised
art and poetry to a sort of religion, in which man communes with the
Eternal by the worship of the ideal; having exalted the universities as
the most sublime of human creations, temples of science and of
intellectual freedom, to come to bombarding Louvain, Malines, and the
Cathedral of Rheims! Having assumed the role of representative par
excellence of culture, of civilization in its loftiest form, at the end
to aim at the subjugation of the world and to strive toward that aim by
the methodical letting loose of brute force, wickedness, and barbarism!
To boast of having attained the highest plane of human nature, and to
reveal themselves as survivors of the Huns and Vandals!

Only yesterday Germany was feared throughout the world because of her
power, but esteemed for her science and her heritage of idealism. Today,
on the contrary, there is a common cry of reprobation and horror rai