But no--this endless, toilsome marching, marching--always onward, yet never at the journey's end.
Who blames them if they fall by the way?
Even the sergeant of the division, passing their crumpled bodies by the roadside, becomes a hypocrite if he kicks them into an obedience of their orders.

In his heart he might well wish to drop out as they have done.

Who blames them, too, if they slink off, hiding behind any cover that will conceal their trembling bodies until the whole army has gone by ?--who blames them if they sham illness, lameness, anything that may be put forward as an excuse to set them free ?--who blames them if a wayside cottage offers them shelter and, taking it, they leave the other poor wretches to go on?
Who blames them then?
No one--no one with a heart could do so.

The great tragedy lies in the fact that they are left to blame themselves.
And this--this is the way that Nature wages war--a civil war, that is the worst, the most harrowing of all.

She fights her own kith and kin; she gives battle to the very conditions which she herself has made.