"NOTHING MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THESE BOYS COLD IN THEIR GRAVES" (Maurice Barres)

Richard A. Koenigsberg

Maurice Barres (1918), a respected French historian and commentator on the First World War, wrote that nothing was "more beautiful yet more difficult to understand" than these boys, today cold in their graves, who "gave themselves for France.” 

Barres called the early years of war—during which thousands of French soldiers were slaughtered on a daily basis "marvelous times" in which "the splendor of our profound unity is revealed.”

National unity was achieved through the slaughter of young men. The evidence is clear, but the truth feels too horrible to bear. 

While the young soldiers had been "learning the lessons of war through sledgehammer blows and in the furnace of fire," Barres said, the “differences and the divisions, which yesterday seemed insurmountable have today completely disappeared.”

The French people came together, not because of the death of outsiders or a "scapegoat," but by virtue of the death of French soldiers. 

Like Pearse, Barres was exhilarated by the death of young men. He links the achievement of unity within France nation—disappearance of “differences and divisions”—directly to the fact that soldiers were willing to sacrifice their lives.