And this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because, as existence grew gentler and men’s nerves more sensitive, the means of destruction by war showed themselves more cruel, ruthless and irresistible.  It seemed more and more probable that no man would ever again endure the infernal horrors of a battlefield and that, after the first slaughter, the opposing armies, officers and men alike, all seized with insuppressible panic, would turn their backs upon one another, in simultaneous, supernatural affright, and flee from unearthly terrors exceeding the most monstrous anticipations of those who had let them loose.

2

To our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed.

We realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incomplete and inaccurate conception of man’s courage.  We looked upon it as an exceptional virtue and one which is the more admired as being also the rarer the farther we go back in history.  Remember, for instance, Homer’s heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes of our day.  Study them closely.  These models of antiquity, the first professors, the first masters of bravery, are not really very brave.  They have a wholesome dread of being hit or wounded and an ingenuous and manifest fear of death.  Their mighty conflicts are declamatory and decorative but not so very bloody; they inflict more noise than pain upon their adversaries, they deliver many more words than blows.  Their defensive weapons—­and this is characteristic—­are greatly superior to their arms of offence; and death is an unusual, unforeseen and almost indecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most often puts a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems quite natural.  As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described, sung and deplored as so many remarkable phenomena.  On the other hand, the most discreditable routs, the most shameful panics are frequent; and the old poet relates them, without condemning them, as ordinary incidents to be ascribed to the gods and inevitable in any warfare.

This kind of courage is that of all antiquity, more or less.  We will not linger over it, nor delay to consider the battles of the Middle Ages or the Renascence, in which the fiercest hand-to-hand encounters of the mercenaries often left not more than half-a-dozen victims on the field.  Let us rather come straight to the great wars of the Empire.  Here the courage displayed begins to resemble our own, but with notable differences.  In the first place, those concerned were solely professionals.  We see not a whole nation fighting, but a delegation, a martial selection, which, it is true, becomes gradually more extensive, but never, as in our time, embraces every man between eighteen and fifty years of age capable of shouldering a weapon.  Again—­and above all—­every war was reduced to two or three pitched battles, that is to say, two or three culminating moments; immense