XIII
CONCLUSION
WE are by no means a cruel people. But dreadfully cruel things happen in our country.
We can make penal servitude into hell, and life into penal servitude.
All thanks to our inability to take measures in time.
The tendency to delay.
To delay fatally.
Always, and in everything.
It had been decided in the face of the astonishing invasion of the enemy to leave for him a desert.
That is the business of the war-chiefs.
Our business, the business of the rear,
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