If these unholy innovations were to blaze the way for the future, we should find the war-makers of to-morrow causing the wheat-fields to bear a poisoned harvest and forcing the very clouds in heaven to rain down pestilences whose germs are known to us now, or would in time be brought to birth in the alembics of German laboratories. Kultur would channel the lava of volcanoes under great cities, and hurl into space vast stretches of the earth’s crust. The planets of the universe, watching, would learn in centuries to come that a monstrous Science had transformed our World into another Moon, void of life and air, around which swim still-born satellites that were once the blasted continents of the Old World or the Americas. But this is not to be. The old master-writer, François Rabelais, has said: “Science without conscience spells ruin to the soul.” And so Science without conscience must mean the destruction of that nation which has chosen it as the foundation of empire. Demoniacal Science, dragon-winged, will be shattered against that invisible and imponderable force, the guardian angel of mankind, which is called Conscience. From the dawn of civilization it has moved slowly, patiently, irresistibly toward the better, toward the good. It has constituted the inexhaustible reserve, the invincible army of moral values, out of which the liberties, the justices, the dignities of the race, and every law of truth, have come to being. History stands ready to number the victories of this moral force over the most strongly organized lawlessness and the mightiest tyrannies. And I ask no better demonstration than this: The State which has declared that might is right, which has trampled under foot all weakness and respects only that which is strong--how comes it that this State finds itself constrained to lie to its own people and to all the nations about the true causes of this war and the men who are responsible for it? How comes it that this State never fails, whenever chance offers, to repeat the dreary lie and mouth it over desperately, absurdly, vainly? Thus does it betray its terror of the universal Conscience. The power which, one year ago, feared neither heaven nor hell, felt instantly and must ever feel the avenging and triumphant assault of all the consciences of humanity--enemy, neutral, and even subject to itself. PAUL HERVIEU _de l’Académie Française_ _July 31, 1915_ [Illustration: _J. L. GÉRÔME_ TURKISH SOLDIER FROM THE ORIGINAL PENCIL DRAWING MADE IN 1857] _GÉNÉRAL HUMBERT_ LES ARABES AVAIENT RAISON Le 28 août 1914, après une sanglante bataille, la 1^{ère} Division du Maroc avait refoulé l’ennemi de la Fosse à l’Eau dans la direction de Thin-le-Moutiers. La nuit venue, malgré des pertes cruelles, la satisfaction était grande: chacun espérait pour le lendemain l’achèvement de la victoire.