But their eyes are opened. They are beginning to make out the
boundless simplicity of things. And Truth not only invests them with
a dawn of hope, but raises on it a renewal of strength and courage.
"That's enough talk about those others!" one of the men commanded;
"all the worse for them!--Us! Us all!" The understanding between
democracies, the entente among the multitudes, the uplifting of the
people of the world, the bluntly simple faith! All the rest, aye,
all the rest, in the past, the present and the future, matters
nothing at all.
And a soldier ventures to add this sentence, though he begins it
with lowered voice, "If the present war has advanced progress by one
step, its miseries and slaughter will count for little."
And while we get ready to rejoin the others and begin war again, the
dark and storm-choked sky slowly opens above our heads. Between two
masses of gloomy cloud a tranquil gleam emerges; and that line of
light, so blackedged and beset, brings even so its proof that the
sun is there.
THE END
End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Under Fire, by Henri Barbusse
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