It is true that, in
any case, within a few years you would have ceased to be. But these few
years of life would have been your universe and your strength."

* * * * *

Andre Delemer, _Waiting_ (leading article in the fourth issue, dated
March, 1917, of the review "Vivre," edited by Andre Delemer and Marcel
Millet, 68 boulevard Rochechouart, Paris).

"If the patriarch of Yasnaya Polyana had been granted a few additional
years, superadded to a life already long and full of grief, he would
have shuddered before the tragedy of the younger generations. Tolstoi
was a man of infinite compassion, and his heart would have been torn
with suffering as he contemplated our fate, the fate of those who were
suddenly thrust into this colossal war, those who had proclaimed their
love for life, those whose faith in the future had seemed an infallible
talisman, those who had fervently uttered this great cry of vital
affirmation:

"'To live out our youth'--how poignant is the irony of these words; what
vistas do they suddenly evoke! All the happiness we have failed to
secure, the joys of which we have been deprived, because one evening the
order came to us to shoulder our rifles! In twenty years' time people
will write about what we have suffered, a suffering which may be
compared with the Passion; but we die daily. One galling privilege is
ours, that we have lived through a convulsion, that we have been the
ransom of past errors and a pledge for the tranquillity of the future.
This mission is at once splendid and cruel; simultaneously it exalts and
revolts; for the spasm through which we are passing wounds us and
immolates us!... To-day the poor quivering refuse raked from the furnace
knows all the bitterness of the laurels. Such pride as we retain makes
it impossible for us to accept an illusory and transient glory. We know
the falsity of attitudinising, and we have probed the emptiness of
certain dreams. The fire has licked up the scenery, has reduced the
tinsel to ashes. We are now face to face with ourselves, perhaps more
fully awakened, certainly more sincere and more disillusioned, for we
have secret wounds to heal and great sufferings to lull in the shade!
The passing of the days is like wormwood in the mouth.... How painful
will be the transition, and how numerous will be the waifs! Already a
fresh anguish oppresses our minds; it is this that will afflict when the
day comes for the return of thos