and sees, and thinks
now. When Gillot was talking to Lagneau, his arguments were exactly
contrary to those he had advanced on the previous day to Clerambault.
It was not only that his ideas had changed, but apparently his whole
disposition. One morning there would be nothing violent enough for his
thirst for action and destruction, and the next he would talk about
going into a little business with lots of money, the best of food, a
tribe of children to bring up, and to hell with the rest! Though they
all called themselves sincere internationalists, there were few
among these poilus who had not preserved the old French prejudice of
superiority of race over the rest of the world, enemies or friends;
and even in their own country over the other provinces, or if they
were Parisians, over the rest of France. This idea was firmly embedded
in their minds, and they boasted of it, not maliciously but by way of
a joke. Uncomplaining, willing, always ready to go, like Gillot, they
were certainly capable of making a revolution and then un-making it,
starting another, and so on--tra-la-la--till all was upset and they
were ready to be the prey of the first adventurer who happened along.
Our political foxes know well enough that the best way to check a
revolution is, at the right moment, to let it blow over while the
people are amused.

It looked then as if the hour was at hand. A year before the end of
the war in both camps there were months and weeks when the infinite
patience of the martyrised people seemed on the point of giving way;
when a great cry was ready to go up, "Enough." For the first time
there was the universal impression of a bloody deception. It is easy
to understand the indignation of the people seeing billions thrown
away on the war when before it their leaders had haggled over a few
hundred thousand for social betterments. There were figures that
exasperated them more than any speeches on the subject. Someone had
calculated that it cost 75,000 francs to kill a man; that made ten
millions of corpses, and for the same sum we could have had ten
millions of stockholders. The stupidest could see the immense value of
the treasure, and the horrible, the shameful, waste for an illusion.
There were things more abject still; from one end of Europe to the
other, there were vermin fattening on death, war-profiteers, robbers
of corpses.

"Do not talk to us any more," said these young men to themselves, "of
the struggle of de