lfish, when, possessing the
minimum of faith and vainly seeking a new ideal, he seemed least
capable of sacrificing himself for an idea of any kind, he finds
himself suddenly confronted with an unprecedented danger, which he is
almost certain that the most heroic nations of history would not have
faced nor even dreamed of facing, whereas he does not even dream that
it is possible to do aught but face it. And let it not be said that we
had no choice, that the danger and the struggle were thrust upon us,
that we had to defend ourselves or die and that in such cases there
are no cowards. It is not true: there was, there always has been,
there still is a choice.

4

It is not man's life that is at stake, but the idea which he forms of
the honour, the happiness and the duties of his life. To save his life
he had but to submit to the enemy; the invader would not have
exterminated him. You cannot exterminate a great people; it is not
even possible to enslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow upon
it for long. He had nothing to be afraid of except disgrace. He did
not so much as see the infamous temptation appear above the horizon of
his most instinctive fears; he does not even suspect that it is able
to exist; and he will never perceive it, whatever sacrifices may yet
await him. We are not, therefore, speaking of a heroism that would be
but the last resource of despair, the heroism of the animal driven to
bay and fighting blindly to delay death's coming for a moment. No, it
is heroism freely donned, deliberately and unanimously hailed, heroism
on behalf of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, heroism in its
clearest, purest and most virginal form, a disinterested and
whole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to
themselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind and to the future. If
life and personal safety were more precious than the idea of honour,
of patriotism and of fidelity to tradition and the race, there was, I
repeat, and there is still a choice to be made; and never perhaps in
any war was the choice easier, for never did men feel more free, never
indeed were they more free to choose.

But this choice, as I have said, did not dare show its faintest shadow
on the lowest horizons of even the most ignoble consciences. Are you
quite sure that, in other times which we think better and more
virtuous than our own, men would not have seen it, would not have
spoken of it? Can you find a nation,