Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

THE CHOLERA OF 1867. 437
him, stop with the picture before my eyes
of that smile of
gratitude which moves and affects me deeply.
The cholera of 1867 was a great misfortune for the army
not less than for the country, but one not without its
good
results.
The army gained advantage in discipline, and it is easy to
understand in what way.
Even for those soldiers to whom the
discipline seemed hardest, on account of their obstinacy, lack
of docility, or because they were quite wanting in any idea of
country or nationality and unable to comprehend either it, or
the necessity for military rigor, even for these soldiers,
in the midst of the misfortunes caused by .the cholera, the
discipline lost all that had at first seemed odious and insupportable,
and assumed quite a different aspect. Naturally,
even the roughest minds, understanding how much there was
that was noble and generous in doing and suffering for the
public health, saw, too, that if instead of being soldiers,
united and subject to discipline, they had been peasants or
operatives, who were free and independent, they would probably
all have fled from every duty or peril, and each provided
for his own individual safety. They felt, therefore, that a part
of the merit of their noble work did not belong to them, and
they ascribed it tacitly to that discipline, the sad consequences
of the lack of which, they saw and experienced every day in
the other classes of the population. The more they admitted
the good intention of all those laws and of all those measures
which they had at
first considered as unreasonable and useless
aggravations, the more they saw the effects
which issued from
their own hands, and which they could not help admiring and
being proud of, they gradually formed a just idea of discipline,