When the mobilization orders were issued, the call to the colours was
sent to young cures and abbes throughout the country, and to monks
belonging to religious orders banished by its politicians. Jesuits and
Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites, who had been exiled from
France for conscience' sake, hurried back at the first summons,
dispensed from that Canon Law which forbids them to shed blood,
and as Frenchmen, loving their country though it expelled them,
rallied to the flag in the hour of peril. They were Christian priests, but
they were also patriots, and Christianity is not so instinctive in its
emotion as the spirit of nationality which, by some natural law, makes
men on one side of a frontier eager to fight till death when they are
challenged by men across the boundary line, forgetting their
principles of peace and the command, "Thou shalt not kill," in their
loyalty to their own soil, crown, or national ideas. There were twenty
thousand priests in the French army, and although many of them
were acting according to their religious vocations as chaplains, or
stretcher-bearers, the great majority were serving as simple soldiers
in the ranks or as officers who had gained promotion by merit.
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