ore every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have been trained at
once in a sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for facts,
and for language as the expression of facts, shall be careful, I hope,
not to trifle thus with that potent and awful engine--human speech. We
shall eschew likewise, I hope, a like abuse of the word moral, which has
crept from the French press now and then, not only into our own press,
but into the writings of some of our military men, who, as Englishmen,
should have known better. We were told again and again, during the late
war, that the moral effect of such a success had been great; that the
morale of the troops was excellent; or again, that the morale of the
troops had suffered, or even that they were somewhat demoralised. But
when one came to test what was really meant by these fine words, one
discovered that morals had nothing to do with the facts which they
expressed; that the troops were in the one case actuated simply by the
animal passion of hope, in the other simply by the animal passion of
fear. This abuse of the word moral has crossed, I am sorry to say, the
Atlantic; and a witty American, whom we must excuse, though we must not
imitate, when some one had been blazing away at him with a revolver, he
being unarmed, is said to have described his very natural emotions on the
occasion, by saying that he felt dreadfully demoralised. We, I hope,
shall confine the word demoralisation, as our generals of the last
century would have done, when applied to soldiers, to crime, including,
of course, the neglect of duty or of discipline; and we shall mean by the
word heroism in like manner, whether applied to a soldier or to any human
being, not mere courage; not the mere doing of duty: but the doing of
something beyond duty; something which is not in the bond; some
spontaneous and unexpected act of self-devotion.

I am glad, but not surprised, to see that Miss Yonge has held to this
sound distinction in her golden little book of 'Golden Deeds;' and said,
"Obedience, at all costs and risks, is the very essence of a soldier's
life. It has the solid material, but it has hardly the exceptional
brightness, of a golden deed."

I know that it is very difficult to draw the line between mere obedience
to duty and express heroism. I know also that it would be both invidious
and impertinent in an utterly unheroic personage like me, to try to draw
that line; and to sit at home at ease, anal