Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/530

502 destroying, who bathed in blood, when nature, utterly drained, forced their insatiable cupidity to give way to a more atrocious passion; nobler sentiments, more excusable errors lead you astray. That faithfulness to your chiefs, which distinguished the Germans your ancestors, that habit of obeying, without stopping to reflect that there are duties more sacred than obedience and taking precedence of all oaths, that credulity which makes men yield to the influence of a small number of madmen or of the ambitious, those are your wrongs ; but they will be crimes, if you do not check yourselves on the brink of the abyss. — Already those of your fellow-countrymen who have preceded you recognize their blindness ; they are deserting, and the acts of kindness from those people whom they were recently slaughtering, and who treat them like brothers, now that they no longer see in their hands the executioner's sword, aggravate their remorse and double their repentance.

Profit by their example, O soldiers ; think of your honor, think of your rights. — Have you not indeed some rights as well as your chiefs? — Yes, undoubtedly : it can not be repeated too often, men take prece dence of princes, who, for the most part, are not worthy of such a name ; leave to infamous courtiers, to impious blasphemers, the task of vaunting the royal prerogative, and its unbounded rights; but do not forget that all men were not made for one man ; that there is an authority superior to all authorities ; that he who orders a crime must not be obeyed, and that thus your conscience is the first of your chiefs. —

Question that conscience ; it will tell you that your blood should flow only for your fatherland, that it is atrocious to receive money to go to slaughter, several thousand leagues away, men who have no other relations with you than those which ought to win them your good will.

She pretends to be carrying on a just war, this mother-country which is straining every nerve to destroy her children ! She claims her rights, and will discuss them only with the thunderbolt of battle ! But even if these rights were real, have you examined them? Is it for you to judge this dispute? Is it for you to pronounce the sentence? Is it for you to carry it out? — Ah, after all, what matter these idle claims, so problematical and so contested? Man, in every country of the world, has the right to be happy. That is the first of laws, that is the first of claims : the founders of colonies do not go forth to make uncultivated lands fertile, to augment the glory and power of the mother-country, in order to be oppressed by her. — Are they oppressed? then they have the right to shake off the yoke, because the is not made for man.