The Warrior's Soul

(1917)

The old officer with long white moustaches gave rein to his indignation.

"Is it possible that you youngsters should have no more sense than that!
Some of you had better wipe the milk off your upper lip before you start
to pass judgment on the few poor stragglers of a generation which has
done and suffered not a little in its time."

His hearers having expressed much compunction the ancient warrior became
appeased. But he was not silenced.

"I am one of them--one of the stragglers, I mean," he went on
patiently. "And what did we do? What have we achieved? He--the great
Napoleon--started upon us to emulate the Macedonian Alexander, with
a ruck of nations at his back. We opposed empty spaces to French
impetuosity, then we offered them an interminable battle so that their
army went at last to sleep in its positions lying down on the heaps of
its own dead. Then came the wall of fire in Moscow. It toppled down on
them.

"Then began the long rout of the Grand Army. I have seen it stream on,
like the doomed flight of haggard, spectral sinners across the innermost
frozen circle of Dante's Inferno, ever widening before their despairing
eyes.

"They who escaped must have had their souls doubly riveted inside their
bodies to carry them out of Russia through that frost fit to split
rocks. But to say that it was our fault that a single one of them got
away is mere ignorance. Why! Our own men suffered nearly to the limit of
their strength. Their Russian strength!

"Of course our spirit was not broken; and then our cause was good--it
was holy. But that did not temper the wind much to men and horses.

"The flesh is weak. Good or evil purpose, Humanity has to pay the price.
Why! In that very fight for that little village of which I have been
telling you we were fighting for the shelter of those old houses as much
as victory. And with the French it was the same.

"It wasn't for the sake of glory, or for the sake of strategy. The
French knew that they would have to retreat before morning and we knew
perfectly well that they would go. As far as the war was concerned there
was nothing to fight about. Yet our infantry and theirs fought like wild
cats, or like heroes if you like that better, amongst the houses--hot
work enough---while the supports out in the open stood freezing in
a tempestuous north wind which drove the snow on earth and the great
masses of clouds in the sky at a terrific pace. The very air was
inexpressibly sombre by contrast with the white earth. I have never seen
God's creation look more sinister than on that day.

"We, the cavalry (we were only a handful), had not much to do except
turn our backs