It was the same with the young men on the other side of the Rhine, and there as here, they were escorted by their gods:  Country, Justice, Right, Liberty, Progress of the World, Eden-like dreams of re-born humanity, a whole phantasmagoria of mystic ideas in which young men shrouded their passions.  None doubted that his cause was the right one, they left discussion to others, themselves the living proof, for he who gives his life needs no further argument.

The older men however who stayed behind, had not their reasons for ceasing to reason.  Their brains were given to them to be used, not for truth, but for victory.  Since in the wars of today, in which entire peoples are engulfed, thoughts as well as guns are enrolled.  They slay the soul, they reach beyond the seas, and destroy after centuries have passed.  Thought is the heavy artillery which works from a distance.  Naturally Clerambault aimed his pieces, also the question for him was no longer to see clearly, largely, to take in the horizon, but to sight the enemy,—­it gave him the illusion that he was helping his son.

With an unconscious and feverish bad faith kept up by his affection, he sought in everything that he saw, heard, or read, for arguments to prop up his will to believe in the holiness of the cause, for everything which went to prove that the enemy alone had wanted war, was the sole enemy of peace, and that to make war on the enemy was really to wish for peace.

There was proof enough and to spare; there always is; all that is needed is to know when to open and shut your eyes ...But nevertheless Clerambault was not entirely satisfied.  These half-truths, or truths with false tails to them, produced a secret uneasiness in the conscience of this honest man, showing itself in a passionate irritation against the enemy, which grew more and more.  On the same lines—­like two buckets in a well, one going up as the other goes down—­his patriotic enthusiasm grew and drowned the last torments of his mind in a salutary intoxication.

From now on he was on the watch for the smallest newspaper items in support of his theory; and though he knew what to think of the veracity of these sheets, he did not doubt them for an instant when their assertions fed his eager restless passion.  Where the enemy was concerned he adopted the principle, that the worst is sure to be true—­and he was almost grateful to Germany when, by acts of cruelty and repeated violations of justice, she furnished him the solid confirmation of the sentence which, for greater security, he had pronounced in advance.