In this chap­ter titled A Bal­lad of Foot­men, a somber med­i­ta­tion unfolds through poet­ic cadence and bit­ing irony, pulling read­ers into the absur­di­ty of war waged at the expense of rea­son and com­pas­sion. Rather than drums and march­ing orders, the tale begins with an old man cling­ing to the scent of ros­es as his city falls—a sym­bol of peace clash­ing against the thun­der of con­quest. The sol­diers are not paint­ed as heroes but as men swept into vio­lence by the shal­low promis­es of pow­er and patri­ot­ic thrill. These foot­men, often young and unaware, find them­selves enlist­ed not for love of cause, but for spec­ta­cle, order, and the hol­low noise of com­mand­ed duty. Through this lens, the nar­ra­tive strips away grandeur, reveal­ing war as machin­ery moved by van­i­ty and com­pli­ance more than jus­tice or neces­si­ty.

A Bal­lad of Foot­men draws its strength from contrast—between march­ing boots and bloom­ing petals, orders barked and silence in grief. Fif­teen mil­lion men, armed with lit­tle more than false val­or and cer­e­mo­ni­al weapon­ry, are pushed into a field of death where the stakes remain unclear and the com­mands blur into abstrac­tion. They do not die for ideals but for dis­agree­ments inflat­ed by polit­i­cal the­ater. Mean­while, the cost echoes beyond the bat­tle­field: women in nine nations choke on sor­row, their grief sti­fled by rit­u­als and red tape. Bureau­cra­cy becomes a grotesque cos­tume, hid­ing the human wreck­age beneath uni­forms and mil­i­tary ranks. The poem dares to mock the sacred sym­bols of war—gold braid, pos­tures of com­mand, and medals that dis­guise fear and fol­ly. In doing so, it expos­es a sys­tem designed to silence hes­i­ta­tion and reward unques­tioned obe­di­ence.

The poem envi­sions an alter­na­tive, one not of hero­ism but of refusal. What if the foot­men sim­ply chose not to march? If, instead of charg­ing at whis­tles, they dropped their bay­o­nets and turned away—not in fear but in defi­ance of the absur­di­ty placed upon their shoul­ders? The emper­or, now furi­ous and alone, would be ren­dered pow­er­less, stripped of his might with­out those will­ing to car­ry it out. No decree, no title, no lash of rank can forge war with­out fol­low­ers. The sim­plic­i­ty of this vision makes it all the more rad­i­cal: peace not as pol­i­cy, but as an act of col­lec­tive will, qui­et yet seis­mic. This imag­ined revolt, though nev­er real­ized, stands as a ques­tion to every reader—what if obe­di­ence was the only chain hold­ing war in place?

The tone is not mere­ly crit­i­cal but mourn­ful, steeped in the mem­o­ry of what war erases—sons, homes, the right to grow old with­out killing. There is rage too, but it burns under the sur­face, chan­neled into rhythm and rep­e­ti­tion that build toward truth rather than spec­ta­cle. This is not a poem for gen­er­als or strate­gists. It speaks to the foot­men themselves—the over­looked, the expend­able, the ones who bleed while empires boast. And it speaks to their moth­ers, wives, and sis­ters, whose suf­fer­ing rarely makes it into the scrolls of nation­al pride. In doing so, the chap­ter refus­es to roman­ti­cize sac­ri­fice when it is extract­ed under false pre­tens­es.

In its deep­er lay­ers, the bal­lad offers com­men­tary on mod­ern sys­tems that reward com­pli­ance over con­science. The foot­men are not evil; they are tired, indoc­tri­nat­ed, or hope­ful, cling­ing to any mean­ing offered to them by their com­man­ders. But beneath their uni­forms are men who might, giv­en the chance, choose life over com­mands. This idea—simple yet subversive—questions the very log­ic of mass con­flict: with­out agree­ment, war can­not pro­ceed. The bal­lad becomes both ele­gy and resis­tance, draw­ing its emo­tion­al pow­er from what could be rather than what is.

By the chapter’s end, the ros­es from the open­ing scene take on deep­er mean­ing. They are not just sym­bols of peace, but of things that grow qui­et­ly, offer beau­ty, and harm no one. They do not march. They do not car­ry orders. They endure. A Bal­lad of Foot­men ulti­mate­ly leaves the read­er not with answers, but with a challenge—to remem­ber the cost of obe­di­ence, the weight of silence, and the frag­ile, endur­ing pow­er of sim­ply say­ing no.