thing that
France expected of her sons.

So, too, for this war, the soldier needed has arisen. After so many
heroes he has invented a new form of heroism.

I say the soldier, for the soldier is what one must say. Here begins
what is clearly expressed in one phrase only--the French miracle. This
national union in which all opinions have become fused is merely a
reflection of the unity which has been suddenly created in our army.

*When War Broke Out.*

When war broke out it found military France ready and armed; mere
troopers, officers none of whom ever thought that he would one day lead
his men under fire, and that admirable General Staff which, never
allowing itself to be deflected from its purpose, did its work silent
and aloof.

But there was beside this France another France, the France of
civilians, accustomed by long years of peace to disbelieve in war;
which, in conjuring up a picture of Europe delivered over to fire and
blood, could not conceive that any human being in the world would assume
the responsibility for such an act before history. War surprised the
employe at his desk, the workman in his workshop, the peasant in his
field. It snatched them from the intimacy of their hearths, from the
amenities of family life which in France is sweeter than elsewhere.
These men were obliged to leave behind beings whom they loved tenderly.
For the last time they clasped in their arms the beloved partners of
their lives, so deeply moved yet so proud, and their children, the
eldest of whom have understood and will never forget. And all of them,
artist and artisan, priest and teacher, those who dreamed of revenge and
those who dreamed of the fraternity of nations, those of every mind,
every profession, every age, as they stepped into their places, were
endowed with the soul of the soldier of France, every one of them, and
became thus the same soldier.

The war which lay in wait for these men, many of whom did not seem made
for war, was a war of which nobody had ever seen the like. We have heard
tell of wars of giants, of battles of nations, but nobody had ever seen
a war extending from the Marne to the Vistula, nor battles with a front
of hundreds of kilometers, lasting weeks without respite day or night,
fought by millions of men. Never in its worst nightmares had
hallucinated imagination conjured up the progress made in the art of
mowing down human lives. The German Army, to which the German Nation has
never re