"For some time I have not been on friendly terms with
religion. But in every walk of life there must be good people, and the
good people ought to understand each other in a crisis like this. Don't
you think so, Boss?"
The war coincided with his socialistic tendencies. Before this,
when speaking of future revolution, he had felt a malign pleasure in
imagining all the rich deprived of their fortunes and having to work in
order to exist. Now he was equally enthusiastic at the thought that all
Frenchmen would share the same fate without class distinction.
"All with knapsacks on their backs and eating at mess."
And he was even extending this military sobriety to those who remained
behind the army. War was going to cause great scarcity of provisions,
and all would have to come down to very plain fare.
"You, too, Boss, who are too old to go to war--you, with all your
millions, will have to eat the same as I. . . . Admit that it is a
beautiful thing."
Desnoyers was not offended by the malicious satisfaction that his future
privations seemed to inspire in the carpenter. He was very thoughtful.
A man of his stamp, an enemy of existing conditions, who had no property
to defend, was going to war--to death, perhaps--because of a generous
and distant ideal, in order that future generations might never know
the actual horrors of war! To do this, he was not hesitating at the
sacrifice of his former cherished beliefs, all that he had held sacred
till now.
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