Read the biography of the Marquis de Lafayette by Laura Auricchio ( borrowed from the library )..
Here was a a young Frenchman, born into a very rich and aristocratic family of France, with a Captain's commission in the French army at the age of 19, and a secure, bright and comfortable future, giving up all that, and against the wishes of his aristocratic, powerful and well connected father-in-law, Marechal de Noailles, and even against the express command of King Louis 16th, going off to to America to join the rebels fighting a war, seemingly against all odds, for independence from British rule, foregoing all pleasures of domestic life and instead exposing himself to hardship and dangers in war, refusing any pay, fighting for the liberty not of his own country but a foreign one which he scarcely knew.
If India is to rise in the comity of nations our youth must have the same idealism which Lafayette had.
