"
It was the common hypothesis among moralists that, as men's nerves
grew more sensitive and the means of destruction more cruel and
irresistible, no human being would be able to support the strain of
actual fighting. It seemed inevitable that soldiers would rapidly
become demoralized, when exposed to the multifarious horrors of modern
mechanical battle. Nothing, therefore, could have been more surprising
than the temper shown by thousands of young men, suddenly called up
from sedentary and safe pursuits, and confronted by the terrors of
shrapnel and liquid fire and mines and gas, and all the other horrible
ingenuities of an unseen enemy for killing and mutilating. Their
imaginations were unaccustomed to these terrors, it is true, but the
higher faculties of the human mind asserted themselves, and in the
vague collective battle of the trenches these young French officers;
despite the refinement and the security in which they had always been
acustomed to exist, instantly reverted to the chivalrous attitude
which their remote ancestors had adopted in a warfare that was
romantic and personal in its individualism.
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