But we find
them, in spite of their fanatical hatred of the Germans (which
we honor and respect) chivalrous antagonists, who in their
wrath of battle are certainly quite our peers; and in them, we
find, there is far more force and will for victory than we
were in the beginning wont to believe. They die for their
fatherland, and their final reason for fighting is after all
an ideal one, the faith in the glory and greatness of a
super-individual, the self-sacrifice to a whole that is higher
than the personal. Thus, at least, does that France stand
opposed to us, that is fighting for its existence in the
trenches along the Aisne.
With the rabble that shouts "a bas la guerre" in Paris, we
need reckon just as little as with the rather doubtful
citizens that constitute the immediate Government of France
and whose heroism seems to show great rents these days. Yes,
for the heroic race of Frenchmen we feel almost a sort of
pity, as with a noble wild game of the forest, wounded unto
death. And this pity finds expression in wistful sympathy when
we think of the quixotic strain in this wrestling with an
overwhelming foe, when we see the childlike faith with which
the people have grasped at every unplausible hope of rescue
from its anguish of death and still grasps at it, as a
drowning man grasps at a wisp of straw.
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