As he listened Clerambault could not keep
down his indignation, but Aime Courtois took it as a matter of course;
that's the way it always has been, and always will be; some are born
to suffer, others not. You can't have mountains without valleys. The
war seemed perfectly idiotic to him, but he would not have lifted a
finger to prevent it. He had in his way the fatalist passivity of the
people, which hides itself, on Gallic soil, behind a veil of ironic
carelessness. The "no use in getting in a sweat about it," of the
trenches. Then there is also that false pride of the French, who fear
nothing so much as ridicule, and would risk death twenty times over
for something they know to be absurd, rather than be laughed at for
an act of unusual common-sense. "You might as well try to stop the
lightning as talk against war." When it hails there is nothing to do
but to cover over your cold-frames if you can, and when it's over go
round and see how much is left of your crop. And they will keep on
doing this until the next hailstorm, the next war, to the end of time.
"No use getting in a sweat." ... It would never occur to them that Man
can change Man.
This stupid heroic resignation irritated Clerambault profoundly.
The upper classes are charmed with it, no doubt, for they owe their
existence to it,--but it makes a Danaid's sieve of the human race,
and its age-long effort, since all its courage, its virtues, and its
labours, are spent in learning how to die.
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