r prayers to the land
of all beautiful things. It must not be, it shall not be that, on the
day when at last we return, not to our homes, for most of these are
destroyed, but to our native soil, that soil is so laid waste as to
have become an unrecognizable desert. You know better than any others
what memories mean, what masterpieces mean to a nation, for your
country is covered with memories and masterpieces. It is also the
land of justice and the cradle of the law, which is simply justice
that has taken cognizance of itself. On this account, Italy owes us
justice. And she owes it to herself to put a stop to the greatest
iniquity in the annals of history, for not to put a stop to it when
one has the power is almost tantamount to taking part in it. It is for
Italy as much as for France that we have suffered. She is the source,
she is the very mother of the ideal for which we have fought and for
which the last of our soldiers are still fighting in the last of our
trenches.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Delivered at the Scala Theatre, Milan, 30 November,
1914.]

* * * * *

HEROISM

VI

HEROISM

1

One of the consoling surprises of this war is the unlooked-for and, so
to speak, universal heroism which it has revealed among all the
nations taking part in it.

We were rather inclined to believe that courage, physical and moral
fortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort of
comfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing death
belonged only to the more primitive, the less happy, the less
intelligent nations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, of
appreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful
abyss that separates this life from the life unknown. We were even
almost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers,
that is to say, of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the
only absolute realities--health, physical comfort, an unimpaired body
and, above all, life, the greatest of earthly possessions--for the
sake of an ideal which, like all ideals, is more or less invisible.

And this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because, as
existence grew gentler and men's nerves more sensitive, the means of
destruction by war showed themselves more cruel, ruthless and
irresistible. It seemed more and more probable that no man would ever
again endure the infernal horrors of a battlef