Those are your enemies. All those people whose childish and odiously
ridiculous disputes you hear snarling above you--"It wasn't me that
began, it was you!"--"No, it wasn't me, it was you!"--"Hit me
then!"--"No, you hit me!"--those puerilities that perpetuate the
world's huge wound, for the disputants are not the people truly
concerned, but quite the contrary, nor do they desire to have done
with it; all those people who cannot or will not make peace on
earth; all those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient
state of things and find or invent excuses for it--they are your
enemies!
They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day
who are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor
dupes hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are
your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their
names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the
heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them
once for all, and be mindful for ever!
* * * * * *
"They will say to you," growled a kneeling man who stooped with his
two bands in the earth and shook his shoulders like a mastiff, 'My
friend, you have been a wonderful hero!' I don't want them to say
it!
"Heroes? Some sort of extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been
murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We
shall do it again with all our might, because it's of great
importance to follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it.
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