Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: ...I may employ it as best I can in the interest of our native land. My duty is therefore to control that strength which, by a law of nature, tends to exert itself in the line of the least resistance. My men, like all others, need to spur their wills at every instant in order that devotion to duty may triumph over the instincts of weariness and fear. My role is to aid them to this victory over themselves; and I fill it almost always by appealing to their noble sentiments, so strong and so pure, but sometimes... Oh, heavens, these are not machines, my soldiers! They are men, like myself. Like all men they have moments when the animal gets the upper hand--moments which later on they bitterly regret--and my duty, when those moments come, is to sustain, even by force if necessary, the nobler part of their souls. By employing all possible means I must keep them from committing an act of cowardice which would dishonor them. That is what I did to-day. I ought to congratulate myself. The officer of the army must not forget that he does his work in the domain of brute force; and he who yielded to pity would be useless. At this moment it is a question of the life or death of our race. Individuals do not count; that is the full meaning of the orders given us by our great leaders when they say: "You must fall in your tracks sooner than yield." That is the voice of our whole people. Oh, what a detestable sophist seems the philosopher who counselled us to "consider man not as a means but as an end." There is but one end to make certain of, at this hour--the life of the French nation, which alone will make possible the life of the individual. Such is the eternal law, and those who have applied it in times gone by appear in history as benefactors of humani...
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