Loup was so small and the war so immense. He
would certainly lose himself in a trench, or get
trodden on, or pushed into a shell hole! His hands
were so small yet they longed to kill — weak hands,
sick hands that refused to heal when the skin was
rubbed off their palms or their knuckles — incredible
that they should long to kill. Or was it that Loup
had forgotten death in his pitiful eagerness for life,
in his pitiful longing for physical well-being? Or was
it the thing that he, Christophe, had felt, that he still
felt, the intolerable urge of their country?
How many men had been killed in the war and
how many men remained for the killing? Great
armies of them, great empires of men coming on and
on through those rivers of blood; themselves bleeding,
agonizing and hating. One must hate, otherwise one
could surely not kill. Jan hated, one could see the
hate in his eyes. Yet the poilus down at la Tarasque
looked kind , . . perhaps one need only hate at the
moment. And all over the world there were women
who wept because in the midst of hate there was love.
They loved, those women, that was why they wept;
yet their tears had failed to unite the world . . . that
was strange for their tears were the hope of the
world ... a union of grief. He paused on this thought.
Was it grief that must finally win through to joy?
Was it pain that would some day compel all souls to
know themselves for only one soul? Was God pain?
Was pain God in His fleshly covering?
What would happen if he, Christophe, should
refuse to go to the war, should refuse to listen to Jan?
Would he then be denying his oneness with God?
But surely God was not war but peace . . . the
creator of a peace that man brought to destruction.
Why had nobody thought of the misery of God, the
pain of God? That was it, God's pain. God was not
pain yet he could not escape it because of this terrible
*x 433