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Numberless people sickened and died in the industrial strife and in miserable living quarters; ubiquitous capitalism was a battle-field strewn with countless corpses; but none of the professed expositors of morality, religion or politics gave heed to the wounded or the dead, or to the conditions which produced these hideous and perpetual slaughters of men, women and children.
Certainly, we do not deny that men who are inclined toward naturalism can and do possess love to a certain degree, but the highest exemplification of love, the love of enemies in the fullest sense of the word not only compassion on the battle-field, but the full, forgiving, blessing love which renders good for evil, and even intercedes for a personal enemy, although he may be the intentional and successful destroyer of our whole earthly happiness such a love may perhaps be demanded and admired by a naturalistic moralist under the imposing influence of the presence of such a love and in unconscious dependence on the motives of Christianity which surround him; but he will never be able to show from what point of his system it is to be deduced.
It is a good plan to strike while the iron is hot; and as the people at Colant were in an interested and receptive state, I put off other things which had been appointed, and made arrangements to return to the battle-field as soon as possible.
You benevolent people had led me into a battle-field, unarmed, and then left me to fight my way through; and I should have done it, too, but at the last I had myself to fight against, and then I gave in.
In the theatre you see the Feldgrau heroes in dugouts in Flanders or in Galician trenches; see the audience weep when the German mother sends off her seven sons or the bearded father meets his youngest boy, schwer verwundet, on the battle-field; or cheer when the curtain goes down on noble blond giants in spiked helmets dangling miniature Frenchmen by the scruff of the neck and forcing craven Highlanders to bite the dust.
No fragrance of intimate, elemental passion lingers still. No fine aroma of being clings through the years and suffuses you with its impalpable sweetness, its subtile strength. You are not awed, because the Awful is not there. But on the battle-field you have no doubt. Imagination roams at will, but in the domains of faith. Realities have been there, and their ghosts walk up and down forever.
I was detached from my brigade to ride over to the battle-field and assist the surgeons of the beaten division, who had more on their hands than they could attend to. When I reached the barn that served for a temporary hospital, I went at once to work.
There was a notorious troop with Napoleon's army, the sixth Italian regiment, which was called the "Legion of Demons." The troop was made up of worthless members of society idlers, highwaymen, outcasts, and desperate characters, who had lost all sense of respectability and morality. The majority of them had sought the asylum of the battle-field to escape imprisonment or worse.
No uncouthness of phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment, could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous, which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with perfect composure. The early puritan at least believed.
It had even become a proverb, "the counsel of Orange, the execution of Egmont," yet we shall have occasion to see how far this physical promptness which had been so felicitous upon the battle-field was likely to avail the hero of St. Quentin in the great political combat which was approaching. As to the talents of the Prince, there was no difference of opinion.
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