Although it is night—­for only at night do they go into the trenches—­the sky is ploughed with illuminating fireworks, with projections and projectiles, of various kinds which bursting sow quick flashes of light, and a death often as prompt.  In a maze of narrow and complicated paths our friend advances without knowing where and feeling his way:  nearer and nearer he approaches to enemies whose sleepless hate growls menacingly below his feet in the ground, around him on the earth, above him in the sky filled with sinister gleams.  He goes his way without enthusiasm, but without hesitation, without boasting, but without fear, knowing by long experience what peril he runs, but offering himself calmly to his formidable destiny, ready to answer:  “Present!” if God and his country demand his life.

[Sidenote:  There are no heroes in past history so grand.]

What hero in all the centuries of history attains to the grandeur of our hero?  Who ever defended, in a war so terrible, a cause so important to the future of the world?  Who has striven so hard, suffered so much, so often passed through death?  To prove himself equal to his high mission, he has had to rid himself of all egoism, renounce lucre and vain honors, sacrifice family joys; many times he has known the worst extremes of weariness, thirst, hunger and cold; he equals and surpasses in austerity the severest of monks; he practices an obedience and humility that monasteries and Thebaides know nothing of, constantly ready to expose himself, as soon as he receives the order, to a terrible and invisible death.  No one ever more completely obeyed the counsels of Christ:  “If you will be perfect, leave your father and mother, your wife, forsake your possessions, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Me.”

[Sidenote:  Humanity has never shown such moral grandeur.]

Those among these brave men who have faith, are conscious of such supernatural life and their letters—­admirable collections have been published—­reflect a light of authentic saintliness.  The others, too, without knowing it, walk in the footsteps of Christ; at the moment of supreme sacrifice He will enlighten them with the brightness of His grace and will admit them, like their believing brothers, into the heaven promised to those who suffer for righteousness.  Humanity which has never known horrors like those it is enduring now, has also never shown such moral grandeur, and it is not astonishing that in face of such great crimes and such great virtues, our soul should pause, breathless, incapable of expressing the excess of its emotion.

[Sidenote:  The devoted war of the American public for the wounded.]