It is not to be denied that ordinary observers were not in any degree prepared for the heroic devotion displayed by such young officers as these at the beginning of the war. The general opinion in peace time was expressed by M. Maurice Maeterlinck when he laid it down that "courage, moral and physical endurance (if not abnegation, forgetfulness of self, renunciation of all comfort, the faculty of sacrifice, the power to face death) belong exclusively to the most primitive, the least happy, the least intelligent of peoples, those which are least capable of reasoning, of taking danger into account." It was the common hypothesis among moralists that, as men's nerves grew more sensitive and the means of destruction more cruel and irresistible, no human being would be able to support the strain of actual fighting. It seemed inevitable that soldiers would rapidly become demoralized, when exposed to the multifarious horrors of modern mechanical battle. Nothing, therefore, could have been more surprising than the temper shown by thousands of young men, suddenly called up from sedentary and safe pursuits, and confronted by the terrors of shrapnel and liquid fire and mines and gas, and all the other horrible ingenuities of an unseen enemy for killing and mutilating. Their imaginations were unaccustomed to these terrors, it is true, but the higher faculties of the human mind asserted themselves, and in the vague collective battle of the trenches these young French officers; despite the refinement and the security in which they had always been acustomed to exist, instantly reverted to the chivalrous attitude which their remote ancestors had adopted in a warfare that was romantic and personal in its individualism. No doubt a not inconsiderable part of the serenity, which is so remarkably evident in the letters and journals of these young men, was due to the fact that they had arrived, for the first time, at a comprehension of the unity of life. There is no tedious alternative of choice in the active military career. All is regulated, all is arranged in accordance with a hierarchical discipline, and war becomes what dogmatic religion is to a weak soul that has been tossed about by the waves of doubt. It must be also borne in mind that the incessant dread of invasion, especially in the neighbourhood of the eastern frontier, had kept the spirits of those who knew that responsibility would fall upon them, in a state of unceasing agitation. It is a paralyzing thing to exist under a perpetual menace which nothing can precipitate and yet nothing can avert. Captain Belmont, in his admirable letters, speaks much of the "romanticism" which attracted many of his companions, and of the natural satisfaction which the declaration of war gave to their restless faculties. The two sentiments were probably one and the same, and to a poetical temperament that might well seem "romantic" which filled a less vivid mind with restlessness and languor.