Many of those accounts already published--joyous greetings from the trenches, or light-hearted letters most carefully selected from among many thousands--due to many reasons, such as the precautions taken by the Censor; the reluctance among non-combatants to emphasize their own inaction and well-being by contrast with the suffering of others; a natural and universal desire to make the best of things; the very human habit of seeking to explain numerous and diverse manifestations by one simple idea, for example, to attribute every great event to the heroism of every man involved--a heroism without an end; and finally, the tone of the Press, the banality of its optimism--all these things contribute to present a picture of war softened and sweetened, abounding in "good times." Such travesty of the truth at once revolts and fills with indignation those who fight. A war such as this has proved to be merits at least that we should hear and face unflinchingly the truth of it in all its entirety. The regiment is on the march; towards the close of day it passes through a village: "The entrance to the village, which is indeed little more than a hamlet, was choked with carriages, with ploughs and horse-rakes, which had been drawn to one side. In silence we pass before the shattered houses. Nothing remains but the mere shells of walls and distorted chimneys still standing above the wrecked hearths. Some charred beams have rolled almost into the middle of the roadway; a large mechanical mowing-machine raises its broken shaft like a stump. "The regiment defiles through the gloomy evening; our steps resound lugubriously and violate the surrounding desolation. In a short while, when the last section will have disappeared over the summit of the hill, the cold and silent night will descend again on the village, and peace shroud the poor, dead houses." The regiment is on the march, and it is raining: "Resignation indeed is difficult of attainment when one knows, as we do, the increase of our sufferings the rain involves: the heavy clothes; the coldness which penetrates with the water; the hardened leather of our boots; trousers flapping against the legs and hindering each stride; the linen at the bottom of the knapsack--that precious linen, to feel which against one's skin is a sheer delight--hopelessly stained, transformed little by little into a sodden mass on which papers and bottles of pickles have left their stain; the mud that spurts into one's face and covers one's hands; the confused arrival; the night all too short for sleep passed beneath a coat that freezes instead of warming; the whole body stiff, joints without suppleness, painful; and the departure with boots of wood which crush the feet like the torture-shoe. Hard, indeed, is resignation!"