Part 27 (2/2)

X

A whole nation, ten whole nations are learning to live in Death's company. Humanity has entered the wild beast's cage, and sits there with the patient courage of the lion-tamer.

Men of my country, I learn to know you better every day, and from having looked you in the face at the height of your sufferings, I have conceived a religious hope for the future of our race. It is mainly owing to my admiration for your resignation, your native goodness, your serene confidence in better times to come that I can still believe in the moral future of the world.

At the very hour when the most natural instinct inclines the world to ferocity, you preserve, on your beds of suffering, a beauty, a purity of outlook which goes far to atone for the monstrous crime. Men of France, your simple grandeur of soul redeems humanity from its greatest crime, and raises it from its deep abyss.

We are told how you bear the misery of the battle-field, how in the discouraging cold and mud, you await the hour of your cruel duty, how you rush forward to meet the mortal blow, through the unimaginable tumult of peril.

But when you come here, there are further sufferings in store for you; and I know with what courage you endure them.

The doors of the Chateau close on a new life for you, a life that is also one of perpetual peril and contest. I help you in this contest, and I see how gallantly you wage it.

Not a wrinkle in your faces escapes me. Not one of your pains, not one of the tremors of your lacerated flesh. And I write them all down, just as I note your simple words, your cries, your sighs of hope, as I also note the expression of your faces at the solemn hour when man speaks no more.

Not one of your words leaves me unmoved; there is not one of your actions which is not worthy of record. All must contribute to the history of our great ordeal.

For it is not enough to give oneself up to the sacred duty of succour.

It is not enough to apply the beneficent knife to the wound, or to change the dressings skilfully and carefully.

It is also my mission to record the history of those who have been the sacrificial victims of the race, without gloss, in all its truth and simplicity; the history of the men you have shown yourselves to be in suffering.

If I left this undone, you would, no doubt, be cured as perfectly, or would perish none the less; but the essence of the majestic lesson would be lost, the most splendid elements of your courage would remain barren.

And I invite all the world to bow before you with the same attentive reverence, WITH HEARTS THAT FORGET NOTHING.

Union of pure hearts to meet the ordeal! Union of pure hearts that our country may know and respect herself! Union of pure hearts for the redemption of the stricken world!

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