It was so quiet that morning in Paris that the heels of my two companions and myself were loud on the deserted pavements. It was a city of shuttered shops, and barred windows, and deserted avenues.

During the early months of the war in 1914 there was a conflict of opinion between the War Office and the Foreign Office regarding news from the Front.

At all costs we must re-establish faith in spiritual values. We must worship something beyond ourselves, lest we destroy ourselves.

But the worst handicap we had the prohibition of naming individual units who had done the fighting.

If there is anything I've learned, is that piety is smarter than hate, that mercy is preferable even to justice itself, that if you go around the world with friendly look, one does good friends.

But do you know, I shall not be sorry to die. I shall be glad, Monsieur. And why glad, you ask? Because I love France and hate the Germans who have put this war on us.

We who go out to die shall be remembered, because we gave the world peace. That will be our reward, though we will know nothing of it, but lie rotting in the earth - dead.