Read "War the Creator" by Gelett Burgess online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The French do nothing without a flavoring of sentiment. Rhetoric flowers in the official proclamations; it makes one laugh even to read the textbooks for soldiers, they are so strewn with fine, resounding phrases; and so, of course, it was quite impossible for Coco's regiment to get away without one of those stirring, gesticulative speeches by the colonel.
It was at the Toulouse railway station-parents in tears. The girls gazed admiringly. Gossipy veterans of '70, seeing themselves reincarnated in these fresh young soldiers, patronized them egregiously with advice. Coco and the other lads listened, but did not hear; they were smiling at the girls sticking bouquets in their rifle barrels.