Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/44

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tering Vouziers in triumph, of course we failed." Then he proceeds:

This affair only deepened my admiration for, my loyalty to, the French. If we did not entirely succeed, it was not the fault of the French soldier. He is a better man, man for man, than the German. Anyone who had seen the charge of the Marsouins at Souain would acknowledge it. Never was anything more magnificent. I remember a captain, badly wounded in the leg, as he passed us, borne back on a litter by four German prisoners. He asked us what regiment we were, and when we told him, he cried "Vive la Légion," and kept repeating "Nous les avons eus. Nous les avons eus." He was suffering, but, oblivious of his wound, was still fired with the enthusiasm of the assault and all radiant with victory. What a contrast with the German wounded on whose faces was nothing but terror and despair. What is the stimulus in their slogans of "Gott mit uns" and "Fur Konig und Vaterland" beside that of men really fighting in defense of their country? Whatever be the force in international conflicts of having justice and all the principles of personal morality on one's side, it at least gives the French soldier a strength that's like the strength of ten against an adversary whose weapon is only brute violence. It is inconceivable that a Frenchman, forced to yield, could behave as I saw German prisoners behave, trembling, on their knees, for all the world like criminals at length overpowered and brought to justice. Such men have to be driven to the assault, or intoxicated. But the Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a passion beside which any of the other forms of experience that are reckoned to make life worth while seem pale in comparison.

A report appeared in the American newspapers that he had been killed in the battle of Champagne. On learning of it, he wrote to his mother:

I am navré to think of your having suffered so. I should have arranged to cable after the attack, had I known that any such

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