Energy books

V

On the 1st of July, 1916, began those prodigious battles which only
lulled down at times during two and a half years more, when our
British armies fought with desperate sacrificial valor beyond all
previous reckoning; when the flower of our youth was cast into that
furnace month after month, recklessly, with prodigal, spendthrift
haste; when those boys were mown down in swaths by machine-guns, blown
to bits by shell-fire, gassed in thousands, until all that country
became a graveyard; when they went forward to new assaults or fell
back in rearguard actions with a certain knowledge that they had in
their first attack no more than one chance in five of escape, next
time one chance in four, then one chance in three, one chance in two,
and after that no chance at all, on the line of averages, as worked
out by their experience of luck. More boys came out to take their
places, and more, and more, conscripts following volunteers, younger
brothers following elder brothers.


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