Dante imagines the terrible things he recounts. Our soldiers have seen them face to face. New Year after New Year has come and gone, and found them living underground, in constant danger of unseen and unavoidable forms of death, huddled together in damp, dark holes, exposed to rain and snow and shell fire. Rarely was there fighting--as we used to understand the term--but daily death took its toll, and ill and wounded were evacuated to the rear. [Sidenote: Modern battle has become a scientific operation.] Ardor they certainly retained for the assault, and heroism for confronting sheets of fire, or clouds of asphyxiating gas; but in the scientific operation which the modern battle has become, most things that are purely personal are more to be dreaded than desired, a fiery temper counts for much less than coolness, discipline, mastery of self, the spirit of abnegation and self-sacrifice. And when the battle was won, that is to say, when they had taken, not a town with a resounding name, but the ruins of a village, a treeless forest, a dismantled fort, a hill thirty metres high, the survivors still had a task before them which had lost none of its roughness or austerity. They had to organize the new position in haste, dig other shelters, undergo bombardments and reject counter-attacks, all the more violent because the enemy, supported in the rear by positions prepared in advance, was more furious than ever after defeat. Thus it continued--until now, even now, when under the irresistible pressure of the French, the English and the Americans, the German wall is crumbling. At last it will be broken, and the victorious flood of the armies of democracy will pass through. Then our invaded provinces and the sacred soil of Belgium will be freed; then the conditions of just and honorable peace among all the nations of the earth may be dictated on the banks of the Rhine--or farther, if necessary. [Sidenote: Patience and tenacity are necessary.] But to support, while we waited, the monotonous trench-life to accomplish the rapid nocturnal raids or the formidable exploits of the great days and weeks of offensive, required more than that brilliant quality of our fathers, the _furia francese_ that was the synonym of overwhelming courage and the ardor which commands victory. Patience to wait, resignation to accept, tenacity to prolong efforts, deliberate and indomitable will to overcome trials, within and without and to press on to the distant goal of final victory were above all things necessary. [Sidenote: "To the end!"] These qualities, summed up in one expression: "To the end!" so profoundly different from those which hitherto have passed as characteristic of our race, were the ones most noticeable in our combatant of the fourth year of the War. Youthful enthusiasm was no more; each man numbered the dangers run, each man took clear account of those to come. [Sidenote: Patriotism becomes a passion.]