ield and that, after the
first slaughter, the opposing armies, officers and men alike, all
seized with insuppressible panic, would turn their backs upon one
another, in simultaneous, supernatural affright, and flee from
unearthly terrors exceeding the most monstrous anticipations of those
who had let them loose.

2

To our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed.

We realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incomplete
and inaccurate conception of man's courage. We looked upon it as an
exceptional virtue and one which is the more admired as being also the
rarer the farther we go back in history. Remember, for instance,
Homer's heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes of our day. Study them
closely. These models of antiquity, the first professors, the first
masters of bravery, are not really very brave. They have a wholesome
dread of being hit or wounded and an ingenuous and manifest fear of
death. Their mighty conflicts are declamatory and decorative but not
so very bloody; they inflict more noise than pain upon their
adversaries, they deliver many more words than blows. Their defensive
weapons--and this is characteristic--are greatly superior to their
arms of offence; and death is an unusual, unforeseen and almost
indecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most often
puts a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems
quite natural. As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described,
sung and deplored as so many remarkable phenomena. On the other hand,
the most discreditable routs, the most shameful panics are frequent;
and the old poet relates them, without condemning them, as ordinary
incidents to be ascribed to the gods and inevitable in any warfare.

This kind of courage is that of all antiquity, more or less. We will
not linger over it, nor delay to consider the battles of the Middle
Ages or the Renascence, in which the fiercest hand-to-hand encounters
of the mercenaries often left not more than half-a-dozen victims on
the field. Let us rather come straight to the great wars of the
Empire. Here the courage displayed begins to resemble our own, but
with notable differences. In the first place, those concerned were
solely professionals. We see not a whole nation fighting, but a
delegation, a martial selection, which, it is true, becomes gradually
more extensive, but never, as in our time, embraces every man between
eighteen and fifty years of age cap