Useless was his excuse-making reasoning. Nobler thoughts showed him the
fallacy of this beating around the bush. Explanations and demonstrations
are unnecessary to the understanding of patriotic and religious ideals;
true patriotism does not need them. One's country . . . is one's
country. And the laboring man, skeptical and jesting, the self-centred
farmer, the solitary pastor, all had sprung to action at the sound
of this conjuring word, comprehending it instantly, without previous
instruction.
"It is necessary to pay," Don Marcelo kept repeating mentally. "I ought
to pay my debt."
As in his dreams, he was constantly feeling the anguish of an upright
and desperate man who wishes to meet his obligations.
Pay! . . . and how? It was now very late. For a moment the heroic
resolution came into his head of offering himself as a volunteer, of
marching with his bag at his side in some one of the groups of future
combatants, the same as the carpenter. But the uselessness of the
sacrifice came immediately into his mind. Of what use would it be?
. . . He looked robust and was well-preserved for his age, but he was
over seventy, and only the young make good soldiers. Combat is but
one incident in the struggle. Equally necessary are the hardship
and self-denial in the form of interminable marches, extremes of
temperature, nights in the open air, shoveling earth, digging trenches,
loading carts, suffering hunger.
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