Charles Wagner, in “The Gospel of Life,” says:
You are struggling with difficulties, your look is troubled
and your good will as well. One of those painful moments of
strife and discouragement, when man is no longer anything but
the shadow of himself, is passing over. In these circumstances
a newspaper falls into your hands. In it you read that, on
such and such a day, in the heart of Africa, surprized by
an ambuscade, surrounded by enemies in superior numbers, an
officer, who does not speak your language and who is not
fighting for your cause, has kept calm; that, the better to show
his tranquil resolution, he has, at a moment like that, before
his troops, hemmed in, lost, lighted his cigar, recalled in few
words the memory of the fatherland and the duty of a soldier;
and then marched toward the enemy and to certain death. It is
all told in three lines. And when you have read it, you arise,
you come out of your depression, you organize your resistance;
you look your trouble in the face, you feel high spirits,
virility, a certain generous ardor for the strife. And all this
life, this precious elasticity of courage that animates you, you
owe to those who are unknown to you, to the vanquished, and to
the dead lying out yonder without burial and without name. What
a proof of what we can do for each other?
(602)