" The value which the higher authority
sets on the cultivation of moral enthusiasm is exemplified by the fact
that the French Ministry of War has encouraged the publication of
those personal records, from which we have here made a selection, on
the ground that they carry throughout the army a contagion of energy
and courage. We are far here from the obscure jealousy of thought
which made a military representative of the British War Office the
other day lay down the brilliant axiom "A hairdresser is of more value
to the country at war than a librarian!" Such a man could not exist in
a French community, where, at the very height of hostilities, so
prominent a military authority as Colonel Emile Manceau could pause to
say, "Let us read, let us give much time to reading!" It is a curious
reflection that the present struggle has been, for the French, the
most literary of all wars, the one in which the ordered expression of
clear thought in language has been most carefully and consciously
cultivated.
This was very far from being the case with the war of 1870, when the
absence of literature was strongly felt during and after the crisis.
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