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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: society has made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the
assassin! But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural
and imperious instinct of death, we relieve ourselves from time
to time, by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters another nation.
It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and
intoxicates the civilians, women and children, who read, by
lamplight at night, the feverish story of massacre.
And do we despise those picked out to accomplish these butcheries
of men? No, they are loaded with honors. They are clad in gold
and in resplendent stuffs; they wear plumes on their heads and
ornaments on their breasts; and they are given crosses, rewards,
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