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Show 140 r4t "Let them die with their arms in their hands, Their death is glorious. and it will he avenged. You can always till the places of soldiers." These were Napoleon‘s words when l)upont sur» rendered his army in Spain to save the lives of a doomed battalion. More conscription. Alter the battle of \Vaeram. we are told. the French heean to feel their weakness; the tirand Arm)‘ Was not the army which fought at lilin and lena. "Raw conscripts raised before their time and hurriedly drafted into the line had impaired its steadints ()n to Moscow, "amidst evervrleepenine' misery they struggled . . . until of the six hundred thousand men who had proudly crossed the Niemen for the conquest ml lx‘ussia. only twenty thousand tarnished. frost-bitten. unarmed spt‘t‘lt'l's stag- w "Wm llim‘lltw gered across the bridge of Lorno in the middle of December." Despite the loss of the most splendid army marshaled by man, Napoleon abated no whit of his resolve to dominate Ger- many and discipline Russia. "lle strained every el't'ort to call the youth of the empire to arms . . . and three hundred and titty thousand conscripts were promised by the Senate. The mighty swirl of the Moscow campaign suclted in one hundred and titty thousand lads of under twenty years of age into the devouringr vortex." l'he peasantry gave tip their sons as food for cannon." But "many were appalled at the frightful drain on the nation's strength." "ln less than half a year after the loss of half a million men a new army nearly as numerous was marsllaled under the imperial eagles. But the majority were yotm 9;, untrained troops. and it was remarked that the conscripts born in the year of Terror had not the stamina of the earlier levi '. llrave they were, superbly brave. and the emperor sought by every means to breathe into them his indomitable spirit." "Truly the emperor could malte boys heroes, but he could never repair the losses of 1812." "Soldiers were wanting, youths were dragged forth." The human harvest was at its very worst. The effects of emigration run parallel with the effects of war, but with this enormous difference: the strongr men who emigrate are not ll/rt to the world. The loss of one region is the gain of another. llut the losses: in war can yield no corresponding gain. The ett‘ects. of emigration can be well studied in England. From Devon and Somerset arose the colony of M achusctts Bay. From the loins of Old England arose our New England, and from the germ of self~g0verning New England arose the United States. The counties of Devon and Somerset have no importance in the England of today comparable with the part they played in the days of Queen Elizabeth Their influence is over the seas, with the young men who carried with them the names of Plymouth and Dartmouth. of Exeter and Taunton, of Bristol and Bath and llarnstable. If we could imagine this New England stock in all its ramifications restored to its hold home in Devon and Somerset. what a wonderful storehouse of active life these sleepy old counties would become! lirom every county of England strong men have gone out to conquer and populate the world. The intluence of this greater England on the movement of civilization in our day far exceeds that of the England at home. "What does he know of England who only England knows ?" No stronger line than this was ever written in detinition of England's greatness Switzerland is the land of freedom, the land of peace. But in earlier times some of the thrifty cantons sent forth their men as hirelin;r soldiers to serve for pay under the tlag' of whosovcr might pay their cost, There was once a proverb in the, French court. "l‘as d'argent, pas de St sses" (No money, no Swiss); for the agents of the free republic drove a Close bargain. In Lueerne stands the noblest of all monuments in all the world, the memorial of the iss guard of Louis XVI, killed by the mob at the palace of Versailles. lt is carved in the solid rock of a vertical clill' aboVe a great spring in the outskirts of the ttityL-a lion of heroic size. a spear thrust through its body. guarding in its dying: paws the l‘iourbon lilies and the shield of France. And the traveler. Carlyle tells us, should visit Lucerne and her monument, "not for Thorwaldsen's salce alone, but for the sake of the German l'iiederlveit and Tapferkeit. the valor of which is worth and truth, be it Saxon, be it Swiss." Beneath the lion are the. names of those whme devotion it commemorates. And with the thought of their courage comes the thought of the pity of it. the waste of brave life in a world that has need for it all. "Sons of the men who knelt at Sempach, but not to thee. O Burgundy." Switzerland has need of more such |