Although Bloch had given us some extreme anti-militarist declarations of faith once he had been passed “fit,” he had earlier, when he thought he would be rejected because of his short sight, made the most chauvinistic declarations. Saint-Loup would have been incapable of making any statement of that sort, principally because of a kind of moral delicacy that prevents the expression of sentiments which are so deeply rooted that they seem a part of one’s nature. There was a time when my mother would not only not have hesitated for a moment to die for my grandmother but would have suffered
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