of France would have risen in him if he could have seen her most sacred church, the visible sign of her faith and her genius, ruined by the German guns.  Was there ever a stupidity so worthy of his scorn as this attempt to bombard the spirit?  For, though the temple is ruined, the faith remains; and whatever war the Germans may make upon the glory of the past, it is the glory of the future that France fights for.  Whatever wounds she suffers now she is suffering for all mankind; and now, more than ever before in her history, are those words become true which one poet who loved her gave to her in the Litany of Nations crying to the earth: 

    I am she that was thy sign and standard bearer,
        Thy voice and cry;
    She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer,
        The same am I.
    Are not these the hands that raised thee fallen, and fed thee,
        These hands defiled? 
    Am not I thy tongue that spake, thine eye that led thee,
        Not I thy child?

The Soldier of 1914

By Rene Doumic.

In spite of the great European war, which struck France with the full force of its horrors, the Institute of France, which includes the world-famous French Academy, held its regular session on Oct. 26 last.  The feature of this session, widely heralded beforehand, was the address of the celebrated critic, M. Rene Doumic of the Academy, on “The Soldier of 1914.”  “Every sentence, every word of it, was punctuated with acclamations from the audience,” says Le Figaro in its report.  Below is a translation of M. Doumic’s address:

The soldier of 1914.  We think only of him.  We live only for him, just as we live only through him.  I have not chosen this subject; it has forced itself upon me.  My only regret is that I come here in academician’s costume, with its useless sword, to speak to you about those whose uniforms are torn by bullets, whose rifles are black with powder.

And I am ashamed, above all, of placing so feeble a voice at the service of so great a cause.  But what do words matter, when the most brilliant of them would pale before acts of which each day makes us the witnesses?  For these acts we have only words, but let us hope that these, coming from the heart, may bring to those who are fighting for their country somewhere near the frontier the spirit of our gratitude and the fervor of our admiration.

Our history is nothing but the history of French valor, so ingenious in adopting new forms and adapting itself each time to the changing conditions of warfare.  Soldiers of the King or of the republic, old “grognards” of Napoleon, who always growled yet followed just the same, youngsters who bit their cartridges with childish lips, veterans of fights in Africa, cuirassieurs of Reichshofen, gardes-mobiles of the Loire, all, at the moment of duty and sacrifice, did everything that France expected of her sons.