VI

“Oh, we shall always live under the burden of the ancient and odious customs, criminal prejudices, and savage ideas of our barbarous ancestors, because we are beasts, and shall remain beasts, who are dominated by instinct and do not change. “Would not any other man than Victor Hugo have been disgraced, if he sent forth this cry of deliverance and truth? “Vain fury and indignation of a poet! War is honored more than ever. “A versatile artist in these matters, a gifted butcher of men, Mr. von Moltke, one day spoke the following words to some delegates of peace: “Thus, uniting into herds of four hundred thousand men, marching day and night without any rest, not thinking of anything, nor studying anything, nor learning anything, nor reading anything, not being useful to a single person, rotting from dirt, sleeping in the mire, living like the brutes in a constant stupor, pillaging cities, burning villages, ruining peoples, then meeting another conglomeration of human flesh, rushing against it, making lakes of blood and fields of battered flesh, mingled with muddy and bloodstained earth and mounds of corpses, being deprived of arms or legs, or having the skull crushed without profit to anyone, and dying in the corner of a field, while your old parents, your wife, and your children are starving⁠—that’s what is called not to fall into the most hideous materialism. “The men of war are the scourges of the world. We struggle against Nature, against ignorance, against