The French are less reticent than we about atrocities
committed by the Boche, because those atrocities form part of
their lives. They are not tucked away in reports of
Commissions, and vaguely referred to as "too awful." Later
on, perhaps, we shall be unreserved in our turn. But they do
not talk of them with any babbling heat or bleat or make funny
little appeals to a "public opinion" that, like the Boche, has
gone underground. It occurs to me that this must be because
every Frenchman has his place and his chance, direct or
indirect, to diminish the number of Boches still alive.
Whether he lies out in a sandwich of damp earth, or sweats the
big guns up the crests behind the trees, or brings the fat,
loaded barges into the very heart of the city, where the
shell-wagons wait, or spends his last crippled years at the
harvest, he is doing his work to that end.
If he is a civilian he may--as he does--say things about his
Government, which, after all, is very like other popular
governments. (A lifetime spent in watching how the cat jumps
does not make lion-tamers.) But there is very little human
rubbish knocking about France to hinder work or darken
counsel. Above all, there is a thing called the Honour of
Civilization, to which France is attached. The meanest man
feels that he, in his place, is permitted to help uphold it,
and, I think, bears himself, therefore, with new dignity.