Of course I can understand that the people
of Payerne were indignant. They had passed to their homes at twilight
through the streets of that beautiful city (or is it a province?), and
they had seen against the silver ending of the sunset the grand grey
figure of the hero of that land remaining to guard the town under the
stars. It certainly must have been a shock to come out in the broad
white morning and find a large vermilion General staring under the
staring sun. I do not blame them at all for clamouring for the
schoolboy's detention in prison; I dare say a little detention in prison
would do him no harm. Still, I think the immense act has something about
it human and excusable; and when I endeavour to analyse the reason of
this feeling I find it to lie, not in the fact that the thing was big or
bold or successful, but in the fact that the thing was perfectly
useless to everybody, including the person who did it. The raid ends in
itself; and so Master Allen is sucked back again, having accomplished
nothing but an epic.
There is one thing which, in the presence of average modern journalism,
is perhaps worth saying in connection with such an idle matter as this.
The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything
else; they are concerned with mutual contract, or with the rights of
independent human lives.
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