Its introduction explained that the army, as a result of the exhaustion, privations and dangers to which it would subject future soldiers, required a strong constitution, but also certain organic reserves from which to draw the necessary energy to battle poor weather, to endure deprivation and to brave obstacles and perils.

‘Organic reserves: what sort of a dreadful medical notion is that!’ thought Auguste. Did the country not have any consideration for its sons, viewing them as nothing more than a store of organs to be endlessly drawn upon? And yet those young men whom he had seen marching in the streets could not wait to go to war against the Prussians. To Berlin! To Berlin! they were all shouting, those innocent, gullible young men; white-hot cannon fodder that would be hurled at the other side for the sole purpose of serving economic interests about which those poor fellows knew nothing. Generation after generation of families could be decimated in these slaughters, with mothers sometimes losing every one of their boys, and yet it seemed the whole world just put up with it – worse, brayed for it again and again – one historical cataclysm hard on the heels of another.

In addition to an impressive list of deformities that allowed conscripts to be exempted when called before the recruitment board – goitre, tissue loss, chronic congestion, congenital idiocy, osteogenesis imperfecta, scrofula, rectal prolapse, supernumerary limbs – there was also a long list of illnesses such as syphilis, cancer, smallpox, tuberculosis or scurvy which offered those afflicted young men the opportunity to die in their bed rather than on the battlefield.

Another passage read: Abnormal ugliness resulting from defective anatomical composition which is likely to inspire repugnance and a degree of despair in the young soldier’s fellow comrades shall be considered incompatible with military life where the majority of actions are shared endeavours ... No luck there, women found him very handsome, and, having acquired every possible malady as a child, he now enjoyed a cast-iron constitution!