A mistake was
made and they were going to shoot the wrong man. It was found out in
time, but neither of the men seemed to care about it; yet they
would probably have run away in battle. The Chinese are not brave, but
you can hire a man to be beheaded in your place.'
'So,' said Ampere, 'you could always hire a substitute in our most
murderous wars, when in the course of a year a regiment was killed twice
over. It was hiring a man, not indeed to be beheaded, but to be shot for
you.'
'The destructiveness,' said Beaumont, 'of a war is only gradually known.
It is found out soonest in the villages when the deaths of the conscripts
are heard of, or are suspected from their never returning; but in the
towns, from which the substitutes chiefly come, it may be long
undiscovered. Nothing is known but what is officially published, and the
Government lies with an audacity which seems always to succeed. If it
stated the loss of men in a battle at one half of the real number, people
would fancy that it ought to be doubled, and so come near to the truth;
but it avows only one-tenth or only one-twentieth, and then the amount of
falsehood is underestimated.
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