Page:Above the battle.djvu/82

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Above the Battle

throughout the years. It knows no pause, even in those hours when the world seems at an end. The vine-growers of Champagne gather in their vintage though the bombs of the rival armies explode around them—and we, too, can do our share! There is work for all who find themselves outside the battle. Especially for those who still can write, it seems to me that there should be something better to do than to brandish a pen dipped in blood and seated at their tables to cry "Kill! Kill!" I hate the war, but even more do I hate those who glorify it without taking part. What would we say of officers who marched behind their men? The noblest role of those who follow in the rear is to pick up their friends who fall, and to bear in mind even during the battle those fair words so often forgotten—Inter Arma Caritas.

Amidst all the misery which every man of feeling can do his share to relieve, let us recall the fate of the prisoner of war. But knowing that Germany to-day blushes at her former sentimentality, I carefully refrain from appealing to her pity by whinings, as they call them, about the destruction of Louvain and Rheims. "War is war." Granted!—then it is natural that it drags

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