The latter also denied nothing of what is, and
wished to understand everything; but his was a fiery spirit, his whole
soul was filled with ordered movement and feeling; with him all life
and death went forward and upward. And his body lay there motionless.
It was a dark hour; the turn of the year 1917-18. In the foggy winter
nights men waited for the supreme onslaught of the German armies,
which rumour had foretold for months past; the Gotha raids on Paris
had already begun. Those who wanted to fight to the end pretended
confidence, the papers kept on boasting, and Clemenceau had never
slept better in his life. But the tension showed in the increasing
bitterness of feeling among civilians. The agonised public turned on
the suspects among them, the defeatists and the pacifists, and
for days at a time the baying of an accusing public pursued these
miserable creatures and hunted them down. And spies swarmed of all
sorts, patriotic denouncers, half-crazed witnesses. When towards the
end of March the long-threatened great offensive against Paris began,
the "sacred" fury between fellow-citizens reached its height, and
there is no doubt that if the invasion had succeeded, before the
Germans had arrived at the gates of the city, the gallows at
Vincennes, that altar of the country's vengeance, would have known
many victims, innocent or guilty, accused or condemned.
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