And the laborer was not torn from the soil to be killed.

Nowadays it is a duty for a poor peasant to be a soldier.

He is exiled from his house, the roof of which smokes in the silence of night; from the fat prairies where the oxen graze; from the fields and the paternal woods.

He is taught how to kill men; he is threatened, insulted, put in prison and told that it is an honor; and, if he does not care for that sort of honor, he is fusilladed.

He obeys because he is terrorized, and is of all domestic animals the gentlest and most docile.