He presumed that this same spirit
was probably animating everybody around him. At times, his old critical
attitude would threaten to rebel, but doubt was repulsed as something
dishonorable. He was living in a new world, and it was but natural that
extraordinary things should occur that could be neither measured nor
explained by the old processes of reasoning. So he commented with
infantile joy on the marvellous accounts in the daily papers--of combats
between a single Belgian platoon and entire regiments of enemies,
putting them to disorderly flight; of the German fear of the bayonet
that made them run like hares the instant that the charge sounded; of
the inefficiency of the German artillery whose projectiles always missed
fire.
It was logical and natural that little Belgium should conquer gigantic
Germany--a repetition of David and Goliath--with all the metaphors and
images that this unequal contest had inspired across so many centuries.
Like the greater part of the nation, he had the mentality of a reader
of tales of chivalry who feels himself defrauded if the hero,
single-handed, fails to cleave a thousand enemies with one fell stroke.
He purposely chose the most sensational papers, those which published
many stories of single encounters, of individual deeds about which
nobody could know with any degree of certainty.
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