I'm of Volpatte's
opinion. Let 'em shirk, good, that's human nature; but afterwards
they shouldn't say, 'I've been a soldier.' Take the engages,
[note 3] for instance--"
"That depends on the engages. Those who have offered for the
infantry without conditions, I look up to those men as much as to
those that have got killed; but the engages in the
departments or special arms, even in the heavy artillery, they begin
to get my back up. We know 'em! When they're doing the agreeable in
their social circle, they'll say, 'I've offered for the war.'--'Ah,
what a fine thing you have done; of your own free will you have
defied the machine-guns! '--'Well, yes, madame la marquise, I'm
built like that!' Eh, get out of it, humbug!"
"Oui, it's always the same tale. They wouldn't be able to say in the
drawing-rooms afterwards, 'Tenez, here I am; look at me for a
voluntary engage!'"
"I know a gentleman who enlisted in the aerodromes. He had a fine
uniform--he'd have done better to offer for the
Opera-Comique. What am I saying--'he'd have done better?'
He'd have done a damn sight better, oui. At least he'd have made
other people laugh honestly, instead of making them laugh with the
spleen in it."
"They're a lot of cheap china, fresh painted, and plastered with
ornaments and all sorts of falderals, but they don't go under fire."
"If there'd only been people like those, the Boches would be at
Bayonne."
"When war's on, one must risk his skin, eh, corporal?"
"Yes," said Bertrand, "there are some times when duty and danger are
exactly the same thing; when the country, when justice and liberty
are in danger, it isn't in taking shelter that you defend them.
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