ts exactly the same determination to exaggerate nothing and to
reduce nothing, but to report exactly what the author saw with his own
eyes, in that little corner of the prodigious battle-field in which
his own regiment was fighting. Truth, the simple unvarnished truth,
has been the object of these various writers in setting down their
impressions, but the result exemplifies the difference between what
is, and what is not, durable as literature. For this purpose, it is
well to turn from Lintier's pages to those of the honest writers of
whom Dupont is the type, and then back again to Lintier. All evoke,
through intense emotion, most moving and most tragic sensations, but
Lintier, gifted with some inscrutable magic, evokes them in the
atmosphere of beauty.

A quality of the mind of Paul Lintier which marked him out for a place
above his fellows was the prodigious exactitude of his memory. This
was not merely visual, but emotional as well. Not only did it retain,
with the precision of a photograph, all the little fleeting details of
the confused and hurried hours in which the war began, but it kept a
minute record of the oscillation of feeling. Those readers who take a
pleasure in the technical parts of writing may enjoy an analysis of
certain pages in "Ma Piece," for instance, the wonderful description
of an _alerte_ at 2 A.M. above the village of Tailly-sur-Meuse (pp.
131, 132). With the vigorous picturesqueness of these sentences we may
compare the pensive quality and the solidity of touch which combine to
form such a passage as the following account of a watch at Azannes
(August 14, 1914):--"La nuit est claire, rayee par les feux des
projecteurs de Verdun qui font des barres d'or dans le ciel;
merveilleuse nuit de mi-aout, infiniment constellee, egayee d'etoiles
filantes qui laissent apres elles de longues phosphorescences.

"La lune s'est levee. Elle perce mal les feuillages denses des
pruniers et le cantonnement immobile reste sombre. Ca et la,
seulement, elle fait des taches jaunes sur l'herbe et sur les croupes
des chevaux qui dorment debout. Le camarade avec qui je partage cette
nuit de garde est etendu dans son manteau au pied d'un grand poirier.
Devant moi, la lune illumine la plaine. Les prairies sont voilees de
gaze blanche. Les deux armees, tous feux eteints, dorment ou se
guettent."

Lintier has no disposition to make things out better than they were.
His account of the defeat at Virton, on August 22, is g