CHAPTER xxxix

IT was not until his arrival at Toulon that
Christophe realized to the full what it meant to
become the slave of war; to submit his body and mind
to be trained in the endless duties exacted by war, in
the skill and resource that were needful in war, in
the ruthlessness that was a part of war, as he and
those like him were housed and fed, well clothed, well
cared for in matters of health and hygiene, well
drilled, and above all well armed, lest they fail to
sustain the rigours of war or prove themselves badly
equipped for killing. He would tell himself that these
things had to be, that he could not escape from the
need of his country, that he also would have to go out
and kill. But such thoughts would neither sustain nor
convince him, for his mind was now filled with its
conception of God — that agonizing yet merciful
God Who endured all wrongs at the hands of creation.
This conception of God was becoming more
insistent, drawing sustenance from the life of the
barracks. He would fancy that God heard the crude
blasphemies, the bestial words, the lascivious jesting,
that God heard Himself coupled with acts of shame;
with the hideous details of bayonet practice; and his
soul would turn sick at the thought of God's wounds,
no longer glimpsing an ultimate glory in which sinner
and saint would become one indeed, and that one the
expression of God's fulfilment.
At times his vision must fling itself forward to the
years when the guns would have ceased to thunder,
439