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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had
his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A
soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of
nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans
of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with that of the
administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most
boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in
a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield passive
obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down the men
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