Every Frenchman saves something of his income; madame sees to it that he does. He knows that if he dies he will not leave wife and children penniless. His son, not yet old enough to fight, will come on to take his place. Men at home who are twenty-two or three and unmarried, men who are twenty-eight or thirty and not long married, and men of forty with some money put by, will, in turn, understand how their own class feels.
In ten minutes you had entered into the hearts of this single company in a way that made you feel that you had got into the heart of the whole French army. When you asked them if they would like to go home they didn’t say “No!” all in a chorus, as if that were what the colonel had told them to say. They obey the colonel, but their thoughts are their own. Otherwise, these ruddy, healthy men, representing the people of France and not the cafés of Paris, would not keep France a republic.
Yes, they did want to go home. They did want to go home. They wanted their wives and babies; they wanted to sit down to morning coffee at their own tables. Lumps rose in their throats at the suggestion. But they were not going until the German peril was over forever. Why stop now, only to have another terrible war in thirty or forty years? A peace that would endure must be won. They had thought that out for themselves. They would not stick to their determination if they had not. This is the way of democracies. Thus every one was conscious that he was fighting not merely to win, but for future generations.
“It happened that this great struggle which we had long feared came in our day, and to us is the duty,” said one. You caught the spirit of comradeship passing the time with jests at one another’s expense. One of the men who was not a full thirty-third degree _poilu_ had compromised with the razor on a moustache as blazing red as his shock of hair.
“I think that the colonel gave him the tip that he would light the way for the Zeppelins,” said a comrade.
“Envy! Sheer envy!” was the retort. “Look at him!” and he pointed at some scraggly bunches on chin and cheeks which resembled a young grass plat that had come up badly.
“I don’t believe in air-tight beards,” was the response.