f 1918 differed from those
of 1914, and that their faces, like the face of the Florentine poet
returning from hell, reflected the terrible things through which they
had passed. The suffering of years, the eternal waiting for a decision
of arms that did not come, the increasing horror of confronting weapons
unknown in the early months--heavy artillery, gas, liquid fire,
aeroplane attacks--left their mark upon our soldiers.

Dante imagines the terrible things he recounts. Our soldiers have seen
them face to face. New Year after New Year has come and gone, and found
them living underground, in constant danger of unseen and unavoidable
forms of death, huddled together in damp, dark holes, exposed to rain
and snow and shell fire. Rarely was there fighting--as we used to
understand the term--but daily death took its toll, and ill and wounded
were evacuated to the rear.

[Sidenote: Modern battle has become a scientific operation.]

Ardor they certainly retained for the assault, and heroism for
confronting sheets of fire, or clouds of asphyxiating gas; but in the
scientific operation which the modern battle has become, most things
that are purely personal are more to be dreaded than desired, a fiery
temper counts for much less than coolness, discipline, mastery of self,
the spirit of abnegation and self-sacrifice. And when the battle was
won, that is to say, when they had taken, not a town with a resounding
name, but the ruins of a village, a treeless forest, a dismantled fort,
a hill thirty metres high, the survivors still had a task before them
which had lost none of its roughness or austerity. They had to organize
the new position in haste, dig other shelters, undergo bombardments and
reject counter-attacks, all the more violent because the enemy,
supported in the rear by positions prepared in advance, was more furious
than ever after defeat. Thus it continued--until now, even now, when
under the irresistible pressure of the French, the English and the
Americans, the German wall is crumbling. At last it will be broken, and
the victorious flood of the armies of democracy will pass through. Then
our invaded provinces and the sacred soil of Belgium will be freed; then
the conditions of just and honorable peace among all the nations of the
earth may be dictated on the banks of the Rhine--or farther, if
necessary.

[Sidenote: Patience and tenacity are necessary.]

But to support, while we waited, the monotonous trench-life t