MEN IN WAR

BY ANDREAS LATZKO

DEDICATED TO FRIEND AND FOE

_"I am convinced the time will come when all will think as I do. "_

CONTENTS

I OFF TO WAR

II BAPTISM OF FIRE

III THE VICTOR

IV MY COMRADE

V A HERO'S DEATH

VI HOME AGAIN

I

OFF TO WAR

The time was late in the autumn of the second year of the war; theplace, the garden of a war hospital in a small Austrian town, which layat the base of wooded hills, sequestered as behind a Spanish wall, andstill preserving its sleepy contented outlook upon existence. 

Day and night the locomotives whistled by. Some of them hauled to thefront trains of soldiers singing and hallooing, high-piled bales of hay, bellowing cattle and ammunition in tightly-closed, sinister-lookingcars. The others, in the opposite direction, came creeping homewardslowly, marked by the bleeding cross that the war has thrown upon allwalls and the people behind them. But the great madness raced throughthe town like a hurricane, without disturbing its calm, as though thelow, brightly colored houses with the old-fashioned ornate façades hadtacitly come to the sensible agreement to ignore with aristocraticreserve this arrogant, blustering fellow, War, who turned everythingtopsy-turvy. 

In the parks the children played unmolested with the large russet leavesof the old chestnut trees. Women stood gossiping in front of the shops, and somewhere in every street a girl with a bright kerchief on her headcould be seen washing windows. In spite of the hospital flags wavingfrom almost every house, in spite of innumerable bulletin boards, notices and sign-posts that the intruder had thrust upon the defenselesstown, peace still seemed to prevail here, scarcely fifty miles away fromthe butchery, which on clear nights threw its glow on the horizon likean artificial illumination. When, for a few moments at a time, there wasa lull in the stream of heavy, snorting automobile trucks and rattlingdrays, and no train happened to be rumbling over the railroad bridge andno signal of trumpet or clanking of sabres sounded the strains of war, then the obstinate little place instantly showed up its dull but good-natured provincial face, only to hide it again in resignation behind itsill-fitting soldier's mask, when the next automobile from the generalstaff came dashing around the corner with a great show of importance. 

To be sure the cannons growled in the distance, as if a gigantic dogwere crouching way below the ground ready to jump up at the heavens, snarling and snapping. The muffled barking of the big mortars came fromover there like a bad fit of coughing from a sickroom, frightening thewatchers who sit with eyes red with crying, listening for every soundfrom the dying man. Even the long, low rows of houses shrank togetherwith a rattle and listened horrorstruck each time the coughing convulsedthe earth, as though the stress of war lay on the world's chest like anightmare. 

The streets exchanged astonished glances, blinking sleepily in thereflection of the night-lamps that inside cast their merrily dancingshadows over close rows of beds. The rooms, choke-full of misery, sentpiercing shrieks and wails and groans out into the night. Every humansound coming through the windows fell upon the silence like a furiousattack. It was a wild denunciation of the war that out there at thefront was doing its work, discharging mangled human bodies like so muchoffal and filling all the houses with its bloody refuse. 

But the beautiful wrought-iron fountains continued to gurgle and murmurcomplacently, prattling with soothing insistence of the days of theiryouth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines andcurves, and war was the affair of princes and adventurers. Legend poppedout of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded soles throughall the narrow little streets, like an invisible gossip whispering ofpeace and comfort. And the ancient chestnut trees nodded assent, andwith the shadows of their outspread fingers stroked the frightenedfaçades to calm them. The past grew so lavishly out of the fissuredwalls that any one coming within their embrace heard the plashing of thefountains above the thunder of the artillery; and the sick and woundedmen felt soothed and listened from their fevered couches to thetalkative night outside. Pale men, who had been carried through the townon swinging stretchers, forgot the hell they had come from; and even theheavily laden victims tramping through the place on a forced march bynight became softened for a space, as if they had encountered Peace andtheir own unarmed selves in the shadow of the columns and the flower-filled bay-windows. 

The same thing took place with the war in this town as with the streamthat came down from out of the mountains in the north, foaming with rageat each pebble it rolled over. At the other end of the town, on passingthe last houses, it took a tender leave, quite tamed and subdued, murmuring very gently, as if treading on tiptoe, as if drowsy with allthe dreaminess it had reflected. Between wide banks, it stepped out intothe broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making almostan island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores cast theirshadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the murmur of theslothful stream mingled with the rustling of the leaves, as if thegarden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang a slumbersong for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file, regimented up to their very death, up to the grave, into which they--unfortunate cobblers, tinkers, peasants, and clerks--were shoved to theaccompaniment of salvos from big-mouthed cannon. 

The sound of taps had just died away, and the watchmen were making theirrounds, when they discovered three men in the deep shadow of the broadavenue, and drove them into the house. 

"Are you officers, eh?" the head-watchman, a stocky corporal of thelandsturm, with grey on his temples, growled and blustered good-naturedly. "Privates must be in bed by nine o'clock. " To preserve a showof authority he added with poorly simulated bearishness: "Well, are yougoing or not?"

He was about to give his usual order, "Quick, take to your legs!" butcaught himself just in time, and made a face as though he had swallowedsomething. 

The three men now hobbling toward the entrance for inmates, would havebeen only too glad to carry out such an order. However, they had onlytwo legs and six clattering crutches between them. It was like a livingpicture posed by a stage manager who has an eye for symmetry. On theright went the one whose right leg had been saved, on the left went hiscounterpart, hopping on his left leg, and in the middle the miserableleft-over of a human body swung between two high crutches, his emptytrousers raised and pinned across his chest, so that the whole man couldhave gone comfortably into a cradle. 

The corporal followed the group with his eyes, his head bent and hisfists clenched, as if bowed down beneath the burden of the sight. Hemuttered a not exactly patriotic oath and spat out a long curve ofsaliva with a hiss from between his front teeth. As he was about to turnand go on his round again, a burst of laughter came from the directionof the officers' wing. He stood still and drew in his head as if from ablow on the back of his neck, and a gleam of ungovernable hatred flittedover his broad, good-natured peasant face. He spat out again, to soothehis feelings, then took a fresh start and passed the merry company witha stiff salute. 

The gentlemen returned the salute carelessly. Infected by the cozinessthat hung over the whole of the town like a light cloud, they weresitting chatting in front of the hospital on benches moved together toform a square. They spoke of the war and--laughed, laughed like happyschoolboys discussing the miseries of examinations just gone through. Each had done his duty, each had had his ordeal, and now, under theprotection of his wound, each sat there in the comfortable expectationof returning home, of seeing his people again, of being fêted, and forat least two whole weeks, of living the life of a man who is not taggedwith a number. 

The loudest of the laughers was the young lieutenant whom they hadnicknamed the Mussulman because of the Turkish turban he wore as officerof a regiment of Bosnians. A shell had broken his leg, and done its workthoroughly. For weeks already the shattered limb had been tightlyencased in a plaster cast, and its owner, who went about on crutches, cherished it carefully, as though it were some precious object that hadbeen confided to his care. 

On the bench opposite the Mussulman sat two gentlemen, a cavalryofficer, the only one on the active list, and an artillery officer, whoin civil life was a professor of philosophy, and so was called"Philosopher" for short. The cavalry captain had received a cut acrosshis right arm, and the Philosopher's upper lip had been ripped by asplinter from a grenade. Two ladies were sitting on the bench thatleaned against the wall of the hospital, and these three men weremonopolizing the conversation with them, because the fourth man sat onhis bench without speaking. He was lost in his own thoughts, his limbstwitched, and his eyes wandered unsteadily. In the war he was alieutenant of the landsturm, in civil life a well-known composer. He hadbeen brought to the hospital a week before, suffering from severe shock. Horror still gloomed in his eyes, and he kept gazing ahead of himdarkly. He always allowed the attendants at the hospital to do whateverthey wanted to him without resistance, and he went to bed or sat in thegarden, separated from the others as by an invisible wall, at which hestared and stared. Even the unexpected arrival of his pretty, fair wifehad not resulted in dispelling for so much as a second the vision of theawful occurrence that had unbalanced his mind. With his chin on hischest he sat without a smile, while she murmured words of endearment;and whenever she tried to touch his poor twitching hands with the tipsof her fingers, full of infinite love, he would jerk away as if seizedby a convulsion, or under torture. 

Tears rolled down the little woman's cheeks--cheeks hungry for caresses. She had fought her way bravely through the zones barred to civiliansuntil she finally succeeded in reaching this hospital in the war zone. And now, after the great relief and joy of finding her husband alive andunmutilated, she suddenly sensed an enigmatic resistance, an unexpectedobstacle, which she could not beg away or cry away, as she had used todo. There was a something there that separated her mercilessly from theman she had so yearned to see. 

She sat beside him impatiently, tortured by her powerlessness to find anexplanation for the hostility that he shed around him. Her eyes piercedthe darkness, and her hands always went the same way, groping forwardtimidly, then quickly withdrawing as though scorched when his shrinkingaway in hatred threw her into despair again. 

It was hard to have to choke down her grief like this, and not burst outin reproach and tear this secret from her husband, which he in hismisery still interposed so stubbornly between himself and his onesupport. And it was hard to simulate happiness and take part in the airyconversation; hard always to have to force some sort of a reply, andhard not to lose patience with the other woman's perpetual giggling. Itwas easy enough for _her_. She knew that her husband, a major-general, was safe behind the lines on the staff of a high command. Shehad fled from the ennui of a childless home to enter into the eventfullife of the war hospital. 

The major's wife had been sitting in the garden with the gentlemen eversince seven o'clock, always on the point of leaving, quite ready to goin her hat and jacket, but she let herself be induced again and again toremain a little longer. She kept up her flirtatious conversation in thegayest of spirits, as if she had no knowledge of all the torments shehad seen during the day in the very house against which she was leaningher back. The sad little woman breathed a sigh of relief when it grew sodark that she could move away from the frivolous chatterbox unnoticed. 

And yet in spite of her titillating conversation and the air ofimportance with which she spoke of her duties as a nurse, the Frau Majorwas penetrated by a feeling that, without her being conscious of it, raised her high above herself. The great wave of motherliness that hadswept over all the women when the fatal hour struck for the men, hadborne her aloft, too. She had seen the three men with whom she was nowgenially exchanging light nothings come to the hospital--like thousandsof others--streaming with blood, helpless, whimpering with pain. Andsomething of the joy of the hen whose brood has safely hatched warmedher coquetry. 

Since the men have been going for months, crouching, creeping on allfours, starving, carrying their own death as mothers carry theirchildren; since suffering and waiting and the passive acceptance ofdanger and pain have reversed the sexes, the women have felt strong, andeven in their sensuality there has been a little glimmer of the newpassion for mothering. 

The melancholy wife, just arrived from a region in which the war existsin conversation only, and engrossed in the one man to the exclusion ofthe others, suffered from the sexless familiarity that they so freelyindulged in there in the shadow of death and agony. But the others wereat home in the war. They spoke its language, which in the men was amixture of obstinate greed for life and a paradoxical softness born of asurfeit of brutality; while in the woman it was a peculiar, garrulouscold-bloodedness. She had heard so much of blood and dying that herendless curiosity gave the impression of hardness and hystericalcruelty. 

The Mussulman and the cavalry officer were chaffing the Philosopher andpoking fun at the phrase-mongers, hair-splitters, and other wasters oftime. They took a childish delight in his broad smile of embarrassmentat being teased in the Frau Major's presence, and she, out of femininepoliteness, came to the Philosopher's rescue, while casting amorouslooks at the others who could deal such pert blows with their tongues. 

"Oh, let the poor man alone, " she laughed and cooed. "He's right. War ishorrible. These two gentlemen are just trying to get your temper up. "She twinkled at the Philosopher to soothe him. His good nature made himso helpless. 

The Philosopher grinned phlegmatically and said nothing. The Mussulman, setting his teeth, shifted his leg, which in its white bandage was theonly part of him that was visible, and placed it in a more comfortableposition on the bench. 

"The Philosopher?" he laughed. "As a matter of fact, what does thePhilosopher know about war? He's in the artillery. And war is conductedby the infantry. Don't you know that, Mrs. ----?"

"I am not Mrs. Here. Here I am Sister Engelberta, " she cut in, and for amoment the expression on her face became almost serious. 

"I beg your pardon, Sister Engelberta. Artillery and infantry, you see, are like husband and wife. We infantrymen must bring the child into theworld when a victory is to be born. The artillery has only the pleasure, just like a man's part in love. It is not until after the child has beenbaptized that he comes strutting out proudly. Am I not right, Captain?"he asked, appealing to the cavalry officer. "You are an equestrian onfoot now, too. "

The captain boomed his assent. In his summary view, members of theReichstag who refused to vote enough money for the military, Socialists, pacifists, all men, in brief, who lectured or wrote or spoke superfluousstuff and lived by their brains belonged in the same category as thePhilosopher. They were all "bookworms. "

"Yes, indeed, " he said in his voice hoarse from shouting commands. "Aphilosopher like our friend here is just the right person for theartillery. Nothing to do but wait around on the top of a hill and lookon. If only they don't shoot up our own men! It is easy enough todispose of the fellows on the other side, in front of us. But I alwayshave a devilish lot of respect for you assassins in the back. But let'sstop talking of the war. Else I'll go off to bed. Here we are at lastwith two charming ladies, when it's been an age since we've seen a facethat isn't covered with stubble, and you still keep talking of thatdamned shooting. Good Lord, when I was in the hospital train and thefirst girl came in with a white cap on her curly light hair, I'd haveliked to hold her hand and just keep looking and looking at her. Upon myword of honor, Sister Engelberta, after a while the shooting gets to bea nuisance. The lice are worse. But the worst thing of all is thecomplete absence of the lovely feminine. For five months to see nothingbut men--and then all of a sudden to hear a dear clear woman's voice!That's the finest thing of all. It's worth going to war for. "

The Mussulman pulled his mobile face flashing with youth into a grimace. 

"The finest thing of all! No, sir. To be quite frank, the finest thingof all is to get a bath and a fresh bandage, and be put into a cleanwhite bed, and know that for a few weeks you're going to have a rest. It's a feeling like--well, there's no comparison for it. But, of course, it is very nice, too, to be seeing ladies again. "

The Philosopher had tilted his round fleshy Epicurean head to one side, and a moist sheen came into his small crafty eyes. He glanced at theplace where a bright spot in the almost palpable darkness suggested theFrau Major's white dress, and began to tell what he thought, very slowlyin a slight sing-song. 

"The finest thing of all, I think, is the quiet--when you have beenlying up there in the mountains where every shot is echoed back andforth five times, and all of a sudden it turns absolutely quiet--nowhistling, no howling, no thundering--nothing but a glorious quiet thatyou can listen to as to a piece of music! The first few nights I sat upthe whole time and kept my ears cocked for the quiet, the way you try tocatch a tune at a distance. I believe I even howled a bit, it was sodelightful to listen to no sound. "

The captain of cavalry sent his cigarette flying through the night likea comet scattering sparks, and brought his hand down with a thump on hisknee. 

"There, there, Sister Engelberta, did you get that?" he criedsarcastically. "'Listen to no sound. ' You see, that's what's calledphilosophy. I know something better than that, Mr. Philosopher, namely, not to hear what you hear, especially when it's such philosophicalrubbish. "

They laughed, and the man they were teasing smiled good-naturedly. He, too, was permeated by the peacefulness that floated into the garden fromthe sleeping town. The cavalryman's aggressive jokes glided off withoutleaving a sting, as did everything else that might have lessened thesweetness of the few days still lying between him and the front. Hewanted to make the most of his time, and take everything easily with hiseyes tight shut, like a child who has to enter a dark room. 

The Frau Major leaned over to the Philosopher. 

"So opinions differ as to what was the finest thing, " she said; and herbreath came more rapidly. "But, tell me, what was the most awful thingyou went through out there? A lot of the men say the drumfire is theworst, and a lot of them can't get over the sight of the first man theysaw killed. How about you?"

The Philosopher looked tortured. It was a theme that did not fit intohis programme. He was casting about for an evasive reply when anunintelligible wheezing exclamation drew all eyes to the corner in whichthe landsturm officer and his wife were sitting. The others had almostforgotten them in the darkness and exchanged frightened glances whenthey heard a voice that scarcely one of them knew, and the man with theglazed eyes and uncertain gestures, a marionette with broken joints, began to speak hastily in a falsetto like the crowing of a rooster. 

"What was the most awful thing? The only awful thing is the going off. You go off to war--and they let you go. That's the awful thing. "

A cold sickening silence fell upon the company. Even the Mussulman'sface lost its perpetually happy expression and stiffened inembarrassment. It had come so unexpectedly and sounded sounintelligible. It caught them by the throat and set their pulsesbounding--perhaps because of the vibrating of the voice that issued fromthe twitching body, or because of the rattling that went along with it, and made it sound like a voice broken by long sobbing. 

The Frau Major jumped up. She had seen the landsturm officer brought tothe hospital strapped fast to the stretcher, because his sobbingwrenched and tore his body so that the bearers could not control himotherwise. Something inexpressibly hideous--so it was said--had halfrobbed the poor devil of his reason, and the Frau Major suddenly dreadeda fit of insanity. She pinched the cavalryman's arm and exclaimed with apretense of great haste:

"My goodness! There's the gong of the last car. Quick, quick, "addressing the sick man's wife, "quick! We must run. "

They all rose. The Frau Major passed her arm through the unhappy littlewoman's and urged with even greater insistence:

"We'll have a whole hour's walk back to town if we miss the car. "

The little wife, completely at a loss, her whole body quivering, bentover her husband again to take leave. She was certain that his outbursthad reference to her and held a grim deadly reproach, which she did notcomprehend. She felt her husband draw back and start convulsively underthe touch of her lips. And she sobbed aloud at the awful prospect ofspending an endless night in the chilly neglected room in the hotel, left alone with this tormenting doubt. But the Frau Major drew heralong, forcing her to run, and did not let go her arm until they hadpassed the sentinel at the gate and were out on the street. Thegentlemen followed them with their eyes, saw them reappear once again onthe street in the lamplight, and listened to the sound of the carreceding in the distance. The Mussulman picked up his crutches, andwinked at the Philosopher significantly, and said something with a yawnabout going to bed. The cavalry officer looked down at the sick mancuriously and felt sorry for him. Wanting to give the poor devil a bitof pleasure, he tapped him on his shoulder and said in his free and easyway:

"You've got a chic wife, I must say. I congratulate you. "

The next instant he drew back startled. The pitiful heap on the benchjumped up suddenly, as though a force just awakened had tossed him upfrom his seat. 

"Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing!" came sputtering from his twitchinglips with a fury that cast out the words like a seething stream. "Shedidn't shed a single tear when I left on the train. Oh, they were allvery dashing when we went off. Poor Dill's wife was, too. Very plucky!She threw roses at him in the train and she'd been his wife for only twomonths. " He chuckled disdainfully and clenched his teeth, fighting hardto suppress the tears burning in his threat. "Roses! He-he! And 'See yousoon again!' They were all so patriotic! Our colonel congratulated Dillbecause his wife had restrained herself so well--as if he were simplygoing off to maneuvers. "

The lieutenant was now standing up. He swayed on his legs, which he heldwide apart, and supported himself on the cavalry captain's arm, andlooked up into his face expectantly with unsteady eyes. 

"Do you know what happened to him--to Dill? I was there. Do you knowwhat?"

The captain looked at the others in dismay. 

"Come on--come on to bed. Don't excite yourself, " he stammered inembarrassment. 

With a howl of triumph the sick man cut him short and snapped in anunnaturally high voice:

"You don't know what happened to Dill, you don't? We were standing justthe way we are now, and he was just going to show me the new photographthat his wife had sent him--his brave wife, he-he, his restrained wife. Oh yes, restrained! That's what they all were--all prepared foranything. And while we were standing there, he about to show me thepicture, a twenty-eighter struck quite a distance away from us, a goodtwo-hundred yards. We didn't even look that way. Then all of a sudden Isaw something black come flying through the air--and Dill fell over withhis dashing wife's picture in his hand and a boot, a leg, a boot withthe leg of a baggage soldier sticking in his head--a soldier that thetwenty-eighter had blown to pieces far away from where we stood. "

He stopped for an instant and stared at the captain triumphantly. Thenhe went on with a note of spiteful pride in his voice, though every nowand then interrupted by a peculiar gurgling groan. 

"Poor Dill never said another word--Dill with the spur sticking in hisskull, a regular cavalry spur, as big as a five-crown piece. He onlyturned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wife'spicture, that she should have permitted such a thing as that. Such athing as that! Such a thing! It took four of us to pull the boot out--four of us. We had to turn it and twist it, until a piece of his braincame along--like roots pulled up--like a jellyfish--a dead one--stickingto the spur. "

"Shut up!" the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away andwalked into the house cursing. 

The other two looked after him longingly, but they could not let theunfortunate man stay there by himself. When the captain had withdrawnhis arm, he had fallen down on the bench again and sat whimpering like awhipped child, with his head leaning on the back. The Philosophertouched his shoulder gently, and was about to speak to him kindly andinduce him to go into the house when he started up again and broke outinto an ugly, snarling laugh. 

"But we tore her out of him, his dashing wife. Four of us had to tug andpull until she came out. I got him rid of her. Out with her! She's gone. All of them are gone. Mine is gone, too. Mine is torn out, too. All arebeing torn out. There's no wife any more! No wife any more, no--"

His head bobbed and fell forward. Tears slowly rolled down his sad, sadface. 

The captain reappeared followed by the little assistant physician, whowas on night duty. 

"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant, " the physician said with affectedseverity. 

The sick man threw his head up and stared blankly at the strange face. When the physician repeated the order in a raised voice, his eyessuddenly gleamed, and he nodded approvingly. 

"Must go, of course, " he repeated eagerly, and drew a deep sigh. "We allmust go. The man who doesn't go is a coward, and they have no use for acoward. That's the very thing. Don't you understand? Heroes are thestyle now. The chic Mrs. Dill wanted a hero to match her new hat. Ha-ha!That's why poor Dill had to go and lose his brains. I, too--you, too--wemust go die. You must let yourself be trampled on--your brains trampledon, while the women look on--chic--because it's the style now. "

He raised his emaciated body painfully, holding on to the back of thebench, and eyed each man in turn, waiting for assent. 

"Isn't it sad?" he asked softly. Then his voice rose suddenly to ashriek again, and the sound of his fury rang out weirdly in the garden. "Weren't they deceiving us, eh? I'd like to know--weren't they cheats?Was I an assassin? Was I a ruffian? Didn't I suit her when I sat at thepiano playing? We were expected to be gentle and considerate!Considerate! And all at once, because the fashion changed, they had tohave murderers. Do you understand? Murderers!"

He broke away from the physician, and stood swaying again, and his voicegradually sank to a complaining sound like the thick strangulatedutterance of a drunkard. 

"My wife was in fashion too, you know. Not a tear! I kept waiting andwaiting for her to begin to scream and beg me at last to get out of thetrain, and not go with the others--beg me to be a coward for her sake. Not one of them had the courage to. They just wanted to be in fashion. Mine, too! Mine, too! She waved her handkerchief just like all therest. "

His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling theheavens to witness. 

"You want to know what was the most awful thing?" he groaned, turning tothe Philosopher abruptly. "The disillusionment was the most awful thing--the going off. The war wasn't. The war is what it has to be. Did itsurprise you to find out that war is horrible? The only surprising thingwas the going off. To find out that the women are horrible--that was thesurprising thing. That they can smile and throw roses, that they cangive up their men, their children, the boys they have put to bed athousand times and pulled the covers over a thousand times, and pettedand brought up to be men. That was the surprise! That they gave us up--that they sent us--_sent_ us! Because every one of them would havebeen ashamed to stand there without a hero. That was the greatdisillusionment. Do you think we should have gone if they had not sentus? Do you think so? Just ask the stupidest peasant out there why he'dlike to have a medal before going back on furlough. Because if he has amedal his girl will like him better, and the other girls will run afterhim, and he can use his medal to hook other men's women away from undertheir noses. That's the reason, the only reason. The women sent us. Nogeneral could have made us go if the women hadn't allowed us to bestacked on the trains, if they had screamed out that they would neverlook at us again if we turned into murderers. Not a single man wouldhave gone off if they had sworn never to give themselves to a man whohas split open other men's skulls and shot and bayoneted human beings. Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I didn't want to believe thatthey could stand it like that. 'They're only pretending, ' I thought. 'They're just restraining themselves. But when the first whistle blows, they'll begin to scream and tear us out of the train, and rescue us. '_Once_ they had the chance to protect us, but all they cared aboutwas being in style--nothing else in the world but just being in style. "

He sank down on the bench again and sat as though he were all broken up. His body was shaken by a low weeping, and his head rolled to and fro onhis panting chest. A little circle of people had gathered behind hisback. The old landsturm corporal was standing beside the physician withfour sentries ready to intervene at a moment's notice. All the windowsin the officers' wing had lighted up, and scantily clad figures leanedout, looking down into the garden curiously. 

The sick man eagerly scrutinized the indifferent faces around him. Hewas exhausted. 

His hoarse throat no longer gave forth a sound. His hand reached out forhelp to the Philosopher, who stood beside him, all upset. 

The physician felt the right moment had come to lead him away. 

"Come, Lieutenant, let's go to sleep, " he said with a clumsy affectationof geniality. "That's the way women are once for all, and there'snothing to be done about it. "

The physician wanted to go on talking and in conversing lure the sickman into the house unawares. But the very next sentence remainedsticking in his throat, and he stopped short in amazement. The limpwobbling skeleton that only a moment before had sat there as in a faintand let himself be raised up by the physician and the Philosopher, suddenly jumped up with a jerk, and tore his arms away so violently thatthe two men who were about to assist him were sent tumbling up againstthe others. He bent over with crooked knees, staggering like a mancarrying a heavy load on his back. His veins swelled, and he pantedwith fury:

"That's the way women are once for all, are they? Since when, eh? Haveyou never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of primeministers, and set fire to museums, and let themselves be chained tolamp-posts for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do youhear? But for the sake of their men? No. Not one sound. Not one singleoutcry!"

He stopped to take breath, overcome by a wild suffocating despair. Thenhe pulled himself together once more and with difficulty suppressing thesobs, which kept bringing a lump into his throat, he screamed in deepestmisery like a hunted animal:

"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of a train forthe sake of her husband? Has a single one of them boxed the ears of aprime minister or tied herself to a railroad track for us? There wasn'tone that had to be torn away. Not one fought for us or defended us. Notone moved a little finger for us in the whole wide world! They drove usout! They gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent usto murder, they sent us to die--for their vanity. Are you going todefend them? No! They must be pulled out! Pulled out like weeds, by theroots! Four of you together must pull the way we had to do with Dill. Four of you together! Then she'll have to come out. Are you the doctor?There! Do it to my head. I don't want a wife! Pull--pull her out!"

He flung out his arm and his fist came down like a hammer on his ownskull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growthof hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful tornout by the roots, and howled with pain. 

The doctor gave a sign, and the next moment the four sentries were onhim, panting. He screamed, gnashed his teeth, beat about him, kickedhimself free, shook off his assailants like burrs. It was not until theold corporal and the doctor came to their assistance that they succeededin dragging him into the house. 

As soon as he was gone the people left the garden. The last to go werethe Mussulman and the Philosopher. The Mussulman stopped at the door, and in the light of the lantern looked gravely down at his leg, which, in its plaster cast, hung like a dead thing between his two crutches. 

"Do you know, Philosopher, " he said, "I'd much rather have this stick ofmine. The worst thing that can happen to one out there is to go crazylike that poor devil. Rather off with one's head altogether and be donewith it. Or do you think he still has a chance?"

The Philosopher said nothing. His round good-natured face had gone ashenpale, and his eyes were swimming with tears. He shrugged his shouldersand helped his comrade up the steps without speaking. On entering theward they heard the banging of doors somewhere far away in the house anda muffled cry. 

Then everything was still. One by one the lights went out in the windowsof the officers' wing. Soon the garden lay like a bushy black island inthe river's silent embrace. Only now and then a gust of wind broughtfrom the west the coughing of the guns like a faint echo. 

Once more a crunching sound was heard on the gravel. It was the foursentries marching back to the watch-house. One soldier was cursing underhis breath as he tried to refasten his torn blouse. The others werebreathing heavily and were wiping the sweat from their red foreheadswith the backs of their hands. The old corporal brought up the rear, hispipe in the corner of his mouth, his head bent low. As he turned intothe main walk a bright sheet of light lit up the sky, and a prolongedrumbling that finally sank into the earth with a growl shook all thewindows of the hospital. 

The old man stood still and listened until the rumbling had died away. Then he shook his clenched fist, and sent out a long curve of salivafrom between his set teeth, and muttered in a disgust that came from thedepths of his soul:

"Hell!"

II

BAPTISM OF FIRE

The company rested for half an hour at the edge of the woods. ThenCaptain Marschner gave the command to start. He was pale, in spite ofthe killing heat, and he turned his eyes aside when he gave LieutenantWeixler instructions that in ten minutes every man should be ready forthe march without fail. 

He had really forced his own hand in giving the order. For now, he knewvery well, there could be no delay. Whenever he left Weixler loose onthe privates, everything went like clock-work. They trembled before thislad of barely twenty as though he were the devil incarnate. Andsometimes it actually seemed to the captain himself as though there weresomething uncanny about that overgrown, bony figure. Never, by anychance, did a spark of warmth flash from those small, piercing eyes, which always mirrored a flickering unrest and gleamed as though fromfever. The one young thing in his whole personality was the small, shymoustache above the compressed lips, which never opened except to ask ina mean, harsh way for some soldier to be punished. For almost a yearCaptain Marschner had lived side by side with him and had never yetheard him laugh, knew nothing of his family, nor from where he came, norwhether he had any ties at all. He spoke rarely, in brief, quicksentences, and brought out his words in a hiss, like the seething of asuppressed rage; and his only topic was the service or the war, asthough outside these two things there was nothing else in the worldworth talking about. 

And this man, of all others, fate had tricked by keeping him in thehinterland for the whole first year of the war. The war had been goingon for eleven months and a half, and Lieutenant Weixler had not yet seenan enemy. 

At the very outset, when only a few miles across the Russian frontier, typhus had caught him before he had fired a single shot. Now at last hewas going to face the enemy!

Captain Marschner knew that the young man had a private's rifle draggedalong for his own use, and had sacrificed all his savings for specialfield-glasses in order to be quite on the safe side and know exactly howmany enemy lives he had snuffed out. Since they had come within closesound of the firing he had grown almost merry, even talkative, impelledby a nervous zeal, like an enthusiastic hunter who has picked up thetrail. The captain saw him going in and out among the massed men, andturned away, hating to see how the fellow plagued his poor weary men, and went at them precisely like a sheep dog gathering in the herd, barking shrilly all the while. Long before the ten minutes were up, thecompany would be in formation, Weixler's impatience guaranteed that. Andthen--then there would be no reason any more for longer delay, nofurther possibility of putting off the fatal decision. 

Captain Marschner took a deep breath and looked up at the sky with wide-open eyes that had a peculiarly intent look in them. In the foreground, beyond the steep hill that still hid the actual field of battle fromview, the invisible machine guns were beating in breathless haste; andscarcely a fathom above the edge of the slope small, yellowish-whitepackages floated in thick clusters, like snowballs flung high in theair--the smoke of the barrage fire through which he had to lead his men. 

It was not a short way. Two kilometers still from the farther spur ofthe hill to the entrance of the communication trenches, and straightacross open fields without cover of any kind. Assuredly no small taskfor a company of the last class of reservists, for respectable familymen who had been in the field but a few hours, and who were only now tosmell powder for the first time and receive their baptism of fire. ForWeixler, whose mind was set on nothing but the medal for distinguishedservice, which he wanted to obtain as soon as possible--for a twenty-year-old fighting cock who fancied the world rotated about his own, mostimportant person and had had no time to estimate the truer values oflife--for him it might be no more than an exciting promenade, a newsting to the nerves, a fine way of becoming thoroughly conscious ofone's personality and placing one's fearlessness in a more brilliantlight. Probably he had long been secretly deriding his old captain'sindecision and had cursed the last halt because it forced him to waitanother half hour to achieve his first deed of heroism. 

Marschner mowed down the tall blades of grass with his riding whip andfrom time to time glanced at his company surreptitiously. He could tellby the way the men dragged themselves to their feet with a sort ofresistance, like children roused from sleep, that they fully understoodwhere they were now to go. 

The complete silence in which they packed their bundles and fell intoline made his heart contract. 

Ever since the beginning of the war, he had been preparing himself forthis moment without relax. He had brooded over it day and night, hadtold himself a thousand times that where a higher interest is at stake, the misery of the individual counts for nothing, and a conscientiousleader must armor himself with indifference. And now he stood there andobserved with terror how all his good resolutions crumbled, and nothingremained in him but an impassioned, boundless pity for these drivenhome-keepers, who prepared themselves with such quiet resignation. Itwas as if they were taking their life into their hands like a costlyvessel in order to carry it into battle and cast it at the feet of theenemy, as though the least thing they owned was that which would soon becrashing into fragments. 

His friends, among whom he was known as "uncle Marschner, " would nothave dared to suggest his sending a rabbit he had reared to the butcheror dragging a dog that had won his affection to the pound. And now hewas to drive into shrapnel fire men whom he himself had trained to besoldiers and had had under his own eyes for months, men whom he knew ashe did his own pockets. Of what avail were subtle or deep reflectionsnow? He saw nothing but the glances of dread and beseeching that his menturned on him, asking protection, as though they believed that theircaptain could prescribe a path even for bullets and shells. And now washe to abuse their confidence? Was he to marshal these bearded childrento death and not feel any emotion? Only two days before he had seen themsurrounded by their little ones, saying good-bye to their sobbing wives. Was he to march on without caring if one or another of them was hit andfell over and rolled in agony in his blood? Whence was he to take thestrength for such hardness of heart? From that higher interest? It hadfaded away. It was impalpable. It was too much a matter of mere words, too much mere sound for him to think that it could fool his soldiers, who looked forward to the barrage fire in dread, with homeward-turnedsouls. 

Lieutenant Weixler, red-cheeked and radiant, came and shouted in hisface that the company was ready. It struck the captain like a blow belowthe belt. It sounded like a challenge. The captain could not helphearing in it the insolent question, "Well, why aren't you as glad ofthe danger as I am?" Every drop of Captain Marschner's blood rose to histemples. He had to look aside and his eyes wandered involuntarily up tothe shrapnel clouds, bearing a prayer, a silent invocation to thosesenseless things up there rattling down so indiscriminately, a prayerthat they would teach this cold-blooded boy suffering, convince him thathe was vulnerable. 

But a moment later he bowed his head in shame. His anger grew againstthe man who had been able to arouse such a feeling in him. 

"Thank you. Let the men stand at rest. I must look after the horses oncemore, " he said in measured tones, with a forced composure that soothedhim. He did not intend to be hustled, now less than ever. He was glad tosee the lieutenant give a start, and he smiled to himself with quietsatisfaction at the indignant face, the defiant "Yes, sir, " said in avoice no longer so loud and so clear, but coming through gnashed teethfrom a contracted throat. The boy was for once in his turn to experiencehow it feels to be held in check. He was so fond of intoxicating himselfwith his own power at the cost of the privates, triumphing, as though itwere the force of his own personality that lorded it over them and notthe rule of the service that was always backing him. 

Captain Marschner walked back to the woods deliberately, doubly glad ofthe lesson he had just given Weixler because it also meant a briefrespite for his old boys. Perhaps a shell would hurtle down into theearth before their noses, and so these few minutes would save the livesof twenty men. Perhaps? It might turn out just the other way, too. Thosevery minutes--ah, what was the use of speculating? It was better not tothink at all! He wanted to help the men as much as he could, but hecould not be a savior to any of them. 

And yet, perhaps? One man had just come rushing up to him from thewoods. This one man he was managing to shelter for the present. He andsix others were to stay behind with the horses and the baggage. Was itan injustice to detail this particular man? All the other non-commissioned officers were older and married. The short, fat man withthe bow-legs even had six children at home. Could he justify himself atthe bar of his conscience for leaving this young, unmarried man here insafety?

With a furious gesture the captain interrupted his thoughts. He wouldhave liked best to catch hold of his own chest and give himself a soundshaking. Why could he not rid himself of that confounded brooding andpondering the right and wrong of things? Was there any justice at allleft here, here in the domain of the shells that spared the worst andlaid low the best? Had he not quite made up his mind to leave hisconscience, his over-sensitiveness, his ever-wakeful sympathy, and allhis superfluous thoughts at home along with his civilian's clothespacked away in camphor in the house where he lived in peace times?

All these things were part of the civil engineer, Rudolf Marschner, whoonce upon a time had been an officer, but who had returned to schoolwhen thirty years old to exchange the trade of war, into which he hadwandered in the folly of youth, for a profession that harmonized betterwith his gentle, thoughtful nature. That this war had now, twenty yearslater, turned him into a soldier again was a misfortune, a catastrophewhich had overtaken him, as it had all the others, without any fault ofhis or theirs. Yet there was nothing to do but to reconcile himself toit; and first of all he had to avoid that constant hair-splitting. Whytorment himself so with questions? Some man had to stay behind in thewoods as a guard. The commander had decided on the young sergeant, andthe young sergeant would stay behind. That settled it. 

The painful thing was the way the fellow's face so plainly showed hisemotion. His eyes moistened and looked at the captain in dog-likegratitude. Disgusting, simply disgusting! And what possessed the man tostammer out something about his mother? He was to stay behind becausethe service required it; his mother had nothing to do with it. She wassafe in Vienna--and here it was war. 

The captain told the man so. He could not let him think it was a bit ofgood fortune, a special dispensation, not to have to go into battle. 

Captain Marschner felt easier the minute he had finished scolding thecrushed sinner. His conscience was now quite clear, just as though ithad really been by chance that he had placed the man at that post. Butthe feeling did not last very long. The silly fellow would not give upadoring him as his savior. And when he stammered, "I take the liberty ofwishing you good luck, Captain, " standing in stiff military attitude, but in a voice hoarse and quivering from suppressed tears, such fervor, such ardent devotion radiated from his wish that the captain suddenlyfelt a strange emptiness again in the pit of his stomach, and he turnedsharply and walked away. 

Now he knew. Now he could approximately calculate all the things Weixlerhad observed in him. Now he could guess how the fellow must have madesecret fun of his sensitiveness, if this simple man, this merecarpenter's journeyman, could guess his innermost thoughts. For he hadnot spoken to him once--simply the night before last, at the entrainmentin Vienna, he had furtively observed his leavetaking from his mother. How had the confounded fellow come to suspect that the wizened, shrunkenlittle old hag whose skin, dried by long living, hung in a thousandloose folds from her cheek-bones, had made such an impression on hiscaptain? The man himself certainly did not know how touching it lookedwhen the tiny mother gazed up at him from below and stroked his broadchest with her trembling hand because she could not reach his face. Noone could have betrayed to the soldier that since then, whenever hiscompany commander looked at him, he could not help seeing the lemon-hued, thick-veined hand with its knotted, distorted fingers, which hadtouched the rough, hairy cloth with such ineffable love. And yet, somehow, the rascal had discovered that this hand floated above himprotectingly, that it prayed for him and had softened the heart of hisofficer. 

Marschner tramped across the meadow in rage against himself. He was asashamed as though some one had torn a mask from his face. Was it as easyas that to see through him, then, in spite of all the trouble he took?He stopped to get his breath, hewed at the grass again with his ridingwhip, and cursed aloud. Oh, well, he simply couldn't act a part, couldn't step out of his skin suddenly, even though there was a worldwar a thousand times over. He used to let his nephews and nieces twisthim round their fingers, and laughed good-naturedly when they did it. Ina single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily uponthe man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast allpeople into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-heartedphilanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turnstraight into a blood-thirsty militarist. He was no longer twenty, likeWeixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted fromtheir lives were each of them far more to him than a mere rifle to besent to the repair shop if broken, or to be indifferently discarded ifsmashed beyond repair. Whoever had looked on life from all sides andreflected upon it could not so easily turn into the mere soldier, likehis lieutenant, who had not been humanized yet, nor seen the world fromany point of view but the military school and the barracks. 

Ah, yes, if conditions still were as at the beginning of the war, whennone but young fellows, happy to be off on an adventure, hallooed fromthe train windows. If they left any dear ones at all behind, they wereonly their parents, and here at last was a chance to make a greatimpression on the old folks. Then Captain Marschner would have held hisown as well as anyone, as well even as the strict disciplinarian, Lieutenant Weixler, perhaps even better. Then the men marched two orthree weeks before coming upon the enemy, and the links that bound themto life broke off one at a time. They underwent a thousand difficultiesand deprivations, until under the stress of hunger and thirst andweariness they gradually forgot everything they had left far--farbehind. In those days hatred of the enemy who had done them all thatharm smouldered and flared higher every day, while actual battle was arelief after the long period of passive suffering. 

But now things went like lightning. Day before yesterday in Viennastill--and now, with the farewell kisses still on one's lips, scarcelytorn from another's arms, straight into the fire. And not blindly, unsuspectingly, like the first ones. For these poor devils now the warhad no secrets left. Each of them had already lost some relative orfriend; each had talked to wounded men, had seen mutilated, distortedinvalids, and knew more about shell wounds, gas grenades, and liquidfire than artillery generals or staff physicians had known before thewar. 

And now it was the captain's lot to lead precisely these clairvoyants, these men so rudely torn up by the roots--he, the retired captain, thecivilian, who at first had had to stay at home training recruits. Nowthat it was a thousand times harder, now his turn had come to be aleader, and he dared not resist the task to which he was not equal. Onthe contrary, as a matter of decency, he had been forced to push hisclaims so that others who had already shed their blood out there shouldnot have to go again for him. 

A dull, impotent rage came over him when he stepped up in front of hismen ranged in deep rows. They stared at his lips in breathless suspense. What was he to say to them? It went against him to reel off compliantlythe usual patriotic phrases that forced themselves on one's lips asthough dictated by an outside power. For months he had carried about thedefiant resolve not to utter the prescribed "_dulce et decorum est propatria mori_, " whatever the refusal might cost. Nothing was sorepulsive to him as singing the praises of the sacrifice of one's life. It was a juggler's trick to cry out that some one was dying while insidethe booth murder was being done. 

He clenched his teeth and lowered his eyes shyly before the wall ofpallid faces. The foolish, childlike prayer, "Take care of us!" gazed athim maddeningly from all those eyes. It drove him to sheer despair. 

If only he could have driven them back to their own people and goneahead alone! With a jerk he threw out his chest, fixed his eyes on amedal that a man in the middle of the long row was wearing, and said:

"Boys, we're going to meet the enemy now. I count upon each of you to dohis duty, faithful to the oath you have sworn to the flag. I shall asknothing of you that the interest of our fatherland and your own interesttherefore and the safety of your wives and children do not absolutelyrequire. You may depend upon that. Good luck! And now--forward, march!"

Without being conscious of it, he had imitated Weixler's voice, hisunnaturally loud, studiedly incisive tone of command, so as to drown theemotion that fluttered in his throat. At the last words he faced aboutabruptly and without looking around tossed the final command over hisshoulder for the men to deploy, and with his head sunk upon his chest hebegan the ascent, taking long strides. Behind him boots crunched andfood pails clattered against some other part of the men's accouterment. Soon, too, there came the sound of the gasping of heavily laden men; anda thick, suffocating smell of sweat settled upon the marching company. 

Captain Marschner was ashamed. A real physical nausea at the part he hadjust played overcame him. What was there left for these simple people todo, these bricklayers and engineers and cultivators of the earth, who, bent over their daily tasks, had lived without vision into the future--what was there left for them to do when the grand folks, the learnedpeople, their own captain with the three golden stars on his collar, assured them it was their duty and a most praiseworthy thing to shootItalian bricklayers and engineers and farmers into fragments? They went--gasping behind him, and he--he led them on! Led them, against his innerconviction, because of his pitiful cowardice, and asked them to becourageous and contemptuous of death. He had talked them into it, hadabused their confidence, had made capital of their love for their wivesand children, because if he acted in the service of a lie, there was achance of his continuing to live and even coming back home safe again, while if he stuck to the truth he believed in there was the certainty ofhis being stood up against a wall and shot. 

He staked their lives and his own life on the throw of loaded dicebecause he was too cowardly to contemplate the certain loss of the gamefor himself alone. 

The sun beat down murderously on the steep, treeless declivity. Thesound of shells bursting off at a distance, of tattooing machine guns, and roaring artillery on their own side was now mingled with the howlingsound of shots whizzing through the air and coming closer and closer. And still the top of the ridge had not been reached! The captain felthis breath fail him, stopped and raised his hand. The men were to gettheir wind back for a moment; they had been on the march since fouro'clock that morning; they had done bravely with their forty-year-oldlegs. He could tell that by his own. 

Full of compassion he looked upon the bluish red faces streaming withsweat, and gave a start when he saw Lieutenant Weixler approaching inlong strides. Why could he no longer see that face without a sense ofbeing attacked, of being caught at the throat by a hatred he couldhardly control? He ought really to be glad to have the man at his sidethere. One glance into those coldly watchful eyes was sufficient tosubdue any surge of compassion. 

"With your permission, Captain, " he heard him rasp out, "I'm going overto the left wing. A couple of fellows there that don't please me at all. Especially Simmel, the red-haired dog. He's already pulling his head inwhen a shrapnel bursts over there. "

Marschner was silent. The red-haired dog--Simmel? Wasn't that the red-haired endman in the second line, the paper-hanger and upholsterer whohad carried that exquisite little girl in his arms up to the lastmoment--until Weixler had brutally driven him off to the train? Itseemed to the captain as though he could still see the children'sastonished upward look at the mighty man who could scold their ownfather. 

"Let him be, he'll get used to it by and by, " he said mildly. "He's gothis children on his mind and isn't in a hurry to make orphans of them. The men can't all be heroes. If they just do their duty. "

Weixler's face became rigid. His narrow lips tightened again into thathard, contemptuous expression which the captain felt each time like theblow of a whip. 

"He's not supposed to think of his brats now, but of his oath to theflag, of the oath he swore to his Majesty, his Commander-in-Chief! Youjust told them so yourself, Captain. "

"Yes, yes, I know I did, " Captain Marschner nodded absent-mindedly, andlet himself slide down slowly on the grass. It was not surprising thatthis boy spoke as he did, but what was surprising was that twenty-fiveyears ago, when he himself had come from the military academy all aglowwith enthusiasm, the phrases "oath to the flag, " "his Majesty, andCommander-in-Chief" had seemed to him, too, to be the sum and substanceof all things. In those days he would have been like this lad and wouldhave gone to war full of joyous enthusiasm. But now that he had growndeaf to the fanfaronade of such words and clearly saw the framework onwhich they were constructed, how was he to keep pace with the young whowere a credulous echo of every speech they heard? How was he suddenly tomake bold reckless blades of his excellent, comfortable Philistines, whom life had so thoroughly tamed that at home they were capable ofgoing hungry and not snatching at treasures that were separated fromthem by only a thin partition of glass? What was the use of making thesame demands upon the upholsterer Simmel as upon the young lieutenant, who had never striven for anything else than to be named first forfencing, wrestling, and courageous conduct? Have mercenaries ever beenfamous for their morals, or good solid citizens for their fearlessness?Can one and the same man be twenty and forty-five years old at the sametime?

Crouching there, his head between his fists, the captain became soabsorbed in these thoughts that he lost all sense of the time and theplace, and the lieutenant's attempts to rouse him by passing by severaltimes and hustling the men about loudly remained unsuccessful. But atlast the sound of a horse's hoofs brought him back to consciousness. Anofficer was galloping along the path that ran about the hill half wayfrom the top. On his head he wore the tall cap that marked him as amember of the general staff. He reined in his horse, asked courteouslywhere the company was bound and raised his eyebrows when CaptainMarschner explained the precise position they were to take. 

"So that's where you're going?" he exclaimed, and his grimace turnedinto a respectful smile. "Well, I congratulate you! You're going intothe very thickest of the lousy mess. For three days the Italians havebeen trying to break through at that point. I wouldn't hold you back fora moment! The poor devils there now will make good use of the relief. Good-bye and good luck!"

Gracefully he touched the edge of his cap. His horse cried out under thepressure of his spurs, and he was gone. 

The captain stared after him as though dazed. "Well, I congratulateyou!" The words echoed in his ears. A man, well mounted, thoroughlyrested, pink and neat as though he had just come out of a band-box, meets two hundred fellowmen dedicated to death; sees them sweaty, breathless, on the very edge of destruction; knows that in another hourmany a face now turned upon him curiously will lie in the grassdistorted by pain or rigid in death--and he says, smiling, "Well, Icongratulate you!" And he rides on and no shudder of awe creeps down hisback, no shadow touches his forehead!

The meeting will fade from the man's memory without leaving a trace. Atdinner that night nothing will remind him of the comrade whose hand, perhaps, he was the last one to press. To these chosen ones, who fromtheir safe positions in the rear, drive the columns on into the fire, what matters a single company's march to death? And the miserable, red-haired upholsterer here was trembling, pulling back his head, tearinghis eyes open mightily, as though the fate of the world depended uponwhether he would ever again carry his little red-haired girl in hisarms. To be sure, if one viewed the whole matter in the properperspective--as a member of the general staff riding by, who kept hisvision fixed on the aim, that is, the victory that sooner or later wouldbe celebrated to the clinking of glasses--why, from that point of viewWeixler was right! It must make him indignant to have events of suchepic grandeur made ridiculous by such a chicken-hearted creature asSimmel and degraded into a doleful family affair. 

"The poor devils there now!" A cold shiver ran down Marschner's back. The staff officer's words suddenly evoked a vision of the shattered, blood-soaked trench where the men, exhausted to the point of death, wereyearning for him as for a redeemer. He arose, with a groan, seized by agrim, embittered hatred against this age. Not a single mesh in the netleft open! Every minute of respite granted his own men was theft or evenmurder committed against the men out there. He threw up his arms andstrode forward, determined to rest no more until he reached the trenchthat he and his company were to man and hold. His face was pale andcareworn, and each time he caught the exasperating rasp of hislieutenant's voice from the other wing crying "Forward! Forward!" it wasdrawn by a tortured smile. 

Suddenly he stood still. Into the rattle, the boom, the explosion ofartillery there leaped suddenly a new tone. It rose clearly above therest of the din, which had almost ceased to penetrate the consciousness. It approached with such a shrill sound, with such indescribableswiftness, with so fierce a threat, that the sound seemed to be visible, as though you could actually see a screaming semicircle rise in the air, bite its way to one's very forehead, and snap there with a short, hard, whiplike crack. A few feet away a little whirl of dust was puffed up, and invisible hail stones slapped rattling down upon the grass. 

A shrapnel!

Captain Marschner looked round startled, and to his terror saw all themen's eyes fixed on him, as though asking his advice. A peculiar smileof shame and embarrassment hovered about their lips. 

It was his business to set the men a good example, to march oncarelessly without stopping or looking up. After all it made nodifference what one did one way or the other. There was no possibilityof running away or hiding. It was all a matter of chance. Chance was theone thing that would protect a man. So the thing to do was to go aheadas if not noticing anything. If there was only one man in the companywho did not seem to care, the others would be put to shame and wouldmutually control each other, and then everything was won. He could tellby his own experience how the feeling of being watched on all sidesupheld him. Had he been by himself, he might have thrown himself on theground and tried to hide behind a stone no matter how small. 

"Nothing but a spent shot! Forward, boys!" he cried, the thought ofbeing a support to his men almost making him cheerful. But the wordswere not out of his mouth when other shots whizzed through the air. Inspite of himself, his body twitched backward and his head sank lowerbetween his shoulders. That made him stiffen his muscles and grind histeeth in rage. It was not the violence with which the scream flew towardhim that made him twitch. It was the strange precision with which thecircle of the thing's flight (exactly like a diagram at a lecture onartillery) curved in front of him. It was this unnatural feeling ofperceiving a sound more with the eye than with the ear that made thewill powerless. 

Something had to be done to create the illusion of not being whollydefenseless. 

"Forward, run!" he shouted at the top of his voice, holding his hands tohis mouth to make a megaphone. 

His men stormed forward as if relieved. The tension left their faces;each one was somehow busied with himself, stumbled, picked himself up, grasped some piece of equipment that was coming loose; and in thegeneral snorting and gasping, the whistle of the approaching shellspassed almost unobserved. 

After a while it came to Captain Marschner's consciousness that some onewas hissing into his left ear. He turned his head and saw Weixlerrunning beside him, scarlet in the face. 

"What is it?" he asked, involuntarily slowing down from a run to a walk. 

"Captain, I beg to announce that an example ought to be instituted! Thatcoward Simmel is demoralizing the whole company. At each shrapnel heyells out, 'Jesus, my Savior, ' and flings himself to the ground. He isfrightening the rest of the men. He ought to be made an example of, a----"

A charge of four shrapnels whizzed into the middle of his sentence. Thescreaming seemed to have grown louder, more piercing. The captain feltas though a monstrous, glittering scythe were flashing in a steep curvedirectly down on his skull. But this time he did not dare to move aneyelash. His limbs contracted and grew taut, as in the dentist's chairwhen the forceps grip the tooth. At the same time, he examined thelieutenant's face closely, curious to see how he was taking the fire forwhich he had so yearned. But he seemed not to be noticing the shrapnelsin the least. He was stretching his neck to inspect the left wing. 

"There!" he cried indignantly. "D'you see, Captain? The miserable cur isdown on his face again. I'll go for him!"

Before Marschner could hold him back, he had dashed off. But half-way hestopped, stood still, and then turned back in annoyance. 

"The fellow's hit, " he announced glumly, with an irritated shrug of hisshoulders. 

"Hit?" the captain burst out, and an ugly, bitter taste suddenly madehis tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth. He observed the frosty calmin Weixler's features, the unsympathetic, indifferent look, and his handstarted upward. He could have slapped him, his insensibility was somaddening and that careless "the fellow's hit" hurt so. The image of thedear little girl with the bright ribbon in her red curls flashed intohis mind, and also the vision of a distorted corpse holding a child inits arms. As through a veil he saw Weixler hasten past him to catch upwith the company, and he ran to where the two stretcher-bearers kneelednext to something invisible. 

The wounded man lay on his back. His flaming red hair framed a greenishgrey face ghostly in its rigidity. A few minutes before CaptainMarschner had seen the man still running--the same face still full ofvitality--from heat and excitement. His knees gave way. The sight ofthat change, so incomprehensible in its suddenness, gripped at hisvitals like an icy hand. Was it possible? Could all the life bloodrecede in the twinkling of an eye, and a strong, hale man crumble intoruins in a few moments? What powers of hell slept in such pieces of ironthat between two breaths they could perform the work of many months ofillness?

"Don't be frightened, Simmel!" the captain stammered, supporting himselfon the shoulder of one of the stretcher-bearers. "They'll carry you backto the baggage!" He forced the lie out with an effort, drawing a deepbreath. "You'll be the first one to get back to Vienna now!" He wantedto add something about the man's family and the little girl with the redcurls, but he could not get it over his lips. He dreaded a cry from thedying man for his dear ones, and when the mouth writhing with painopened slowly, it sent an inner tremor through the captain. He saw theeyes open, too, and he shuddered at their glassy stare, which seemed nolonger to fix itself upon any bodily thing but to be looking through allthose present and seeking something at a distance. 

Simmers body writhed under the forcible examination of the doctor'shands. Incomprehensible gurgling sounds arose from his torn cheststreaming with blood, and his breath blew the scarlet foam at his mouthinto bursting bubbles. 

"Simmel! What do you want, Simmel?" Marschner besought, bending low overthe wounded man. He listened intently to the broken sounds, convincedthat he would have to try to catch a last message. He breathed in reliefwhen the wandering eyes at last found their way back and fastenedthemselves on his face with a look of anxious inquiry in them. "Simmel!"he cried again, and grasped his hand, which trembled toward the wound. "Simmel, don't you know me?"

Simmel nodded. His eyes widened, the corners of his mouth drooped. 

"It hurts--Captain--hurts so!" came from the shattered breast. To thecaptain it sounded like a reproach. After a short rattling sound of painhe cried out again, foaming at the mouth and with a piercing shriek ofrage: "It hurts! It hurts!" He beat about with his hands and feet. 

Captain Marschner jumped up. 

"Carry him back, " he commanded, and without knowing what he did, he puthis fingers into his ears, and ran after the company, which had alreadyreached the top of the ridge. He ran pressing his head between his handsas in a vise, reeling, panting, driven by a fear, as though the woundedman's agonized cry were pursuing him with lifted axe. He saw theshrunken body writhe, the face that had so suddenly withered, theyellowish white of the eyes. And that cry: "Captain--hurts so!" echoedwithin him and clawed at his breast, so that when he reached the summithe fell down, half choked, as if the ground had been dragged from underhis feet. 

No, he couldn't do that sort of thing! He didn't want to go on with it. He was no hangman, he was incapable of lashing men on to their death. Hecould not be deaf to their woe, to that childlike whimpering which stunghis conscience like a bitter reproach. He stamped on the grounddefiantly. Everything in him arose in rebellion against the task thatcalled him. 

Below, the field of battle stretched far out, cheerlessly grey. No tree, no patch of green. A stony waste--chopped up, crushed, dug inside out, no sign of life. The communication trenches, which started in the bottomof the valley and led to the edge of the hill, from which the wireentanglements projected, looked like fingers spread out to graspsomething and clawed deep into the throttled earth. Marschner lookedround again involuntarily. Behind him the green slope descended steeplyto the little woods in which the baggage had been left. Farther behindthe white highroad gleamed like a river framed in colored meadows. Ashort turn--and the greenness vanished! All life succumbed, as thoughroared down by the cannons, by the howling and pounding that hammered inthe valley like the pulsating of a colossal fever. Shell hole upon shellhole yawned down there. From time to time thick, black pillars of earthleaped up and for moments hid small parts of this desert burned toashes, where the cloven stumps of trees, whittled as by pen-knives, stuck up like a jeering challenge to the impotent imagination, achallenge to recognize in this field of death and refuse, the landscapeit once had been, before the great madness had swept over it and sown itwith ruins, leaving it like a dancing floor on which two worlds hadfought for a loose woman. 

And into this vale of hell he was now to descend! _Live_ down therefive days and five nights, he and his little company of the damned, spewed down into that place, their living bodies speared on the fishinghook, bait for the enemy!

All alone, with no one near to hear him, amid the fury of the burstingshrapnel, which fell up there as thick as rain in a thunderstorm, Captain Marschner gave himself up to his rage, his impotent rage againsta world that had inflicted such a thing on him. He cursed and roared outhis hatred into the deaf tumult; and then he sprang up when, far below, almost in the valley already, his men emerged followed by LieutenantWeixler, who ran behind them like a butcher's helper driving oxen to theshambles. The captain saw them hurry, saw the clouds of the explosionsmultiply above their heads, and on the slope in front of him saw bluish-green heaps scattered here and there, like knapsacks dropped by the way, some motionless, some twitching like great spiders--and he rushed on. 

He raced like a madman down the steep slope, scarcely feeling the groundunder his feet, nor hearing the rattle of the exploding shells. He flewrather than ran, stumbled over charred roots, fell, picked himself upagain and darted onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, almost with closed eyes. Now and then, as from a train window, he saw apale, troubled face flit by. Once it seemed to him he heard a manmoaning for water. But he wished to hear nothing, to see nothing. He ranon, blind and deaf, without stopping, driven by the terror of that bad, reproachful, "Hurts so!"

Only once did he halt, as though he had stepped into a trap and wereheld fast in an iron vise. A hand stopped him, a grey, convulsed handwith crooked fingers. It stuck up in front of him as though hewn out ofstone. He saw no face, nor knew who it was that held out that dead, threatening fist. All he knew was that two hours before, over there inthe little piece of woods, that hand had still comfortably cut slices ofrye bread or had written a last post-card home. And a horror of thosefingers took hold of the captain and lent new strength to his limbs, sothat he stormed onward in great leaps like a boy until, with throbbingsides and a red cloud before his eyes, he caught up with his company atlast, way down in the valley at the entrance to the communicationtrenches. 

Lieutenant Weixler presented himself in strictest military form andannounced the loss of fourteen men. Marschner heard the ring of pride inhis voice, like triumph over what had been achieved, like the rejoicingof a boy bragging of the first down on his lip and deepening the newlyacquired dignity of a bass voice. What were the wounded men writhing onthe slope above to this raw youth, what the red-haired coward with hiswhine, what the children robbed of their provider growing up to bebeggars, to a life in the abyss, perhaps to a life in jail? All thesewere mere supers, a stage background for Lieutenant Weixler's heroism tostand out in relief. Fourteen bloody bodies lined the path he hadtrodden without fear. How should his eyes not radiate arrogance?

The captain hastened on, past Weixler. If only he did not have to seehim, he told himself, if only he did not have to meet the contentedgleam of the man's eyes. He feared his rage might master his reason andhis tongue get beyond his control, and his clenched fist do its ownwill. But here he had to spare this man. Here Lieutenant Weixler waswithin his rights. He grew from moment to moment. His stature dwarfedthe others. He swam upon the stream, while the others, weighed down bythe burden of their riper humanity, sank like heavy clods. Here otherlaws obtained. The dark shaft in which they now reeled forward withtrembling knees led to an island washed by a sea of death. Whoever wasstranded there dared not keep anything that he used in another world. The man who was master here was the one who had kept nothing but his axeand his fist. And he was the rich one upon whose superabundance theothers depended. As Captain Marschner groped his way through theslippery trench in a daze, it became clearer and clearer to him that hemust now hold on to his detested lieutenant like a treasure. Without himhe would be lost. 

He saw the traces of puddles of blood at his feet, and trod upontattered, blood-soaked pieces of uniforms, on empty shells, rattlingpreserve tins, fragments of cannon balls. Yawning shell holes would openup suddenly, precariously bridged with half-charred boards. 

Everywhere the traces of frenzied devastation grinned, blackened remainsof a wilderness of wires, beams, sacks, broken tools, a disorder thattook one's breath away and made one dizzy--all steeped in thesuffocating stench of combustion, powder smoke, and the pungent, stinging breath of the ecrasite shells. Wherever one stepped the earthhad been lacerated by gigantic explosions, laboriously patched up again, once more ripped open to its very bowels, and leveled a second time, sothat one reeled on unconscious, as if in a hurricane. 

Crushed by the weight of his impressions, Captain Marschner creptthrough the trench like a worm, and his thoughts turned ever morepassionately, ever more desperately to Lieutenant Weixler. Weixler alonecould help him or take his place, with that grim, cold energy of his, with that blindness to everything which did not touch his own life, orwhich was eclipsed by the glowing vision of an Erich Weixler studdedwith decorations and promoted out of his turn. The captain kept lookingabout for him anxiously, and breathed with relief each time the urgent, rasping voice came to his ears from the rear. 

The trench seemed never to be coming to an end. Marschner felt hisstrength giving way. He stumbled more frequently and closed his eyeswith a shudder at the criss-cross traces of blood that preciselyindicated the path of the wounded. Suddenly he raised his head with ajerk. A new smell struck him, a sweetish stench which kept gettingstronger and stronger until at a curve of the trench wall, which swungoff to the left at this point and receded semicircularly, it burst uponhim like a great cloud. He looked about, shaken by nausea, his gorgerising. In a dip in the trench he saw a pile of dirty, tattered uniformsheaped in layers and with strangely rigid outlines. It took him sometime to grasp the full horror of that which towered in front of him. Fallen soldiers were lying there like gathered logs, in the contortedshapes of the last death agony. Tent flaps had been spread over them, but had slipped down and revealed the grim, stony grey caricatures, thefallen jaws, the staring eyes. The arms of those in the top tier hungearthward like parts of a trellis, and grasped at the faces of thoselying below, and were already sown with the livid splotches ofcorruption. 

Captain Marschner uttered a short, belching cry and reeled forward. Hishead shook as though loosened from his neck, and his knees gave way sothat he already saw the ground rising up toward him, when suddenly anunknown face emerged directly in front of him and attracted hisattention, and gave him back his self-control. It was a sergeant, whowas staring at him silently with great, fevered, gleaming eyes in adeathly pale face. For a moment the man stood as though paralyzed, thenhis mouth opened wide, he clapped his hands, and jumped into the airlike a dancer, and dashed off, without thinking of a salute. 

"Relief!" he shouted while running. 

He came to a halt before a black hole in the trench wall, like theentrance to a cave, and bent down and shouted into the opening with aring of indescribable joy in his voice--with a rejoicing that sounded asif it came through tears:

"Relief! Lieutenant! The relief party is here!"

The captain looked after him and heard his cry. His eyes grew moist, sotouching was that childlike cry of joy, that shout from out of arelieved heart. He followed the sergeant slowly, and saw--as though thecry had awakened the dead--pallid faces peering from all corners, wounded men with blood-soaked bandages, tottering figures holding theirrifles. Men streamed toward him from every direction, stared at him andwith speechless lips formed the word "relief, " until at length one ofthem roared out a piercing "hurrah, " which spread like wildfire andfound an echo in unseen throats that repeated it enthusiastically. Deeply shaken, Marschner bowed his head and swiftly drew his hand acrosshis eyes when the commandant of the trench rushed toward him from thedugout. 

Nothing that betokens life was left about the man. His face was ashen, his eyes like lamps extinguished, glazed and surrounded by broad bluerims. His lids were a vivid red from sleeplessness. His hair, his beard, his clothes were encased in a thick crust of mud, so that he looked asif he had just arisen from the grave. He gave a brief, military salute, then grasped the captain's hand with hysterical joy. His hand was coldas a corpse's and sticky with sweat and dirt. And most uncanny was thecontrast between this skeleton hung with clothes, this rigid death-maskof a face, and the twitching, over-excited nervousness with which thelieutenant greeted their liberator. 

The words leaped like a waterfall from his cracked lips. He drewMarschner into the dugout and pushed him, stumbling and groping as ifdazzled, down on an invisible something meant for a seat and began totell his tale. He couldn't stand still for a second. He hopped about, slapped his thighs, laughed with unnatural loudness, ran up and downtrippingly, threw himself on the couch in the corner, asked for acigarette every other minute, threw it away without knowing it after twopuffs, and at once asked for another. 

"I tell you, three hours more, " he crowed blissfully, with affectedgaiety, "--three? What am I talking about. _One_ hour more, and itwould have been too late. D'you know how many rounds of ammunition I'vegot left? Eleven hundred in all! Machine guns? Run down! Telephone?Smashed since last night already! Send out a party to repair it?Impossible! Needed every man in the trench! A hundred and sixty-four ofus at first. Now I've got thirty-one, eleven of them wounded so thatthey can't hold a rifle. Thirty-one fellows to hold the trench with!Last night there were still forty-five of us when they attacked. Wedrove 'em to hell, of course, but fourteen of our men went again. Wehaven't had a chance to bury them yet. Didn't you see them lying outthere?"

The Captain let him talk. He leaned his elbows on the primitive table, held his head between his hands, and kept silent. His eyes wanderedabout the dark, mouldy den, filled with the stench of a smoking littlekerosene lamp. He saw the mildewed straw in the corner, the disconnectedtelephone at the entrance, an empty box of tinned food on which acrumpled map was spread out. He saw a mountain of rifles, bundles ofuniforms, each one ticketed. And he felt how inch by inch, a dumb, icyhorror arose within him and paralyzed his breathing, as though the earthoverhead, upheld by only a thin scaffolding of cracked boards andthreatening to fall at any moment, had already laid its intolerableweight upon his chest. And that prancing ghost, that giggling death'shead, which only a week before perhaps had still been young, affectedhim like a nightmare. And the thought that now his turn had come tostick it out in that sepulchral vault for five or six days or a week andexperience the same horrors that the man there was telling about with alaugh intensified his discouragement into a passionate, throbbingindignation which he could scarcely control any more. He could haveroared out, could have jumped up, run out, and shouted to mankind fromthe depths of his soul asking why he had been tossed there, why he wouldhave to lie there until he had turned into carrion or a crazy man. Howcould he have let himself be driven out there? He could not understandit. He saw no meaning to it all, no aim. All he saw was that hole in theearth, those rotting corpses outside, and nearby, but one step removedfrom all that madness, his own Vienna as he had left it only two daysbefore, with its tramways, its show windows, its smiling people and itslighted theaters. What madness to be crouching there waiting for deathwith idiotic patience, to perish on the naked earth in blood and filth, like a beast, while other people, happy, clean, dressed up, sat inbright halls and listened to music, and then nestled in soft bedswithout fear, without danger, guarded by a whole world, which would comedown in indignation upon any who dared to harm a single hair of theirheads. Had madness already stolen upon him or were the others mad?

His pulse raged as though his heart would burst if he could not relievehis soul by a loud shout. 

At that very moment Lieutenant Weixler came bustling in, like the masterof ceremonies at a ball. He stood stiff and straight in front of thecaptain, and announced that everything above was in readiness, that hehad already assigned the posts and arranged the watches, and placed themachine guns. The captain looked at him and had to lower his eyes as ifboxed on the ears by this tranquillity, which would suddenly wither hisfury into a burning shame at himself. 

Why did that man remain untouched by the great fear of death whichimpregnated the very air here? How was it that he could give orders andcommands with the foresightedness of a mature man, while he himselfcrept out of sight like a frightened child and rebelled against his fatewith the senseless fury of an animal at bay, instead of mastering fateas befitted his age? Was he a coward? Was he in the grip of a mean, paltry fear, was he overcome by that wretched blindness of the soulwhich cannot lift its vision beyond its own ego nor lose sight of itsego for the sake of an idea? Was he really so devoid of any sense forthe common welfare, so utterly ruled by short-sighted selfishness, concerned with nothing but his bare, miserable existence? No, he was notlike that. He clung to his own life no more than any other man. He couldhave cast it away enthusiastically, and without flying banners, withoutecstasy, without the world's applause, had the hostile trenches overthere been filled with men like Weixler, had the combat been againstsuch crazy hardness of soul, against catchwords fattened with humanflesh, against that whole, cleverly built-up machine of force whichdrove those whom it was supposed to protect to form a wall to protectitself. He would have hurled himself into the fight with bare fists, unmindful of the bursting of shells, the moans of the wounded. Oh no, hewas not a coward. Not what those two men thought. He saw them winkscornfully and make fun of the unhappy old uncle of a reserve officerwho sat in the corner like a bundle of misery. What did they know of hissoul's bitterness? They stood there as heroes and felt the glances oftheir home upon them, and spoke words which, upborne by the echo of awhole world, peopled the loneliness with all the hosts of the likemindedand filled their souls with the strength of millions. And they laughedat a man who was to kill without feeling hatred and die without ecstasy, for a victory that was nothing to him but a big force which achieved itsobjects simply because it hit harder, not because it had justice on itsside or a fine and noble aim. He had no cause to slink off, humbled bytheir courage. 

A cold, proud defiance heartened him, so that he arose, strengthenedsuddenly, as if elevated by the superhuman burden that he alone carriedon his shoulders. He saw the strange lieutenant still dancing about, hastily gathering up his belongings and stuffing them into his knapsack. He heard him scold his orderly and bellow at him to hurry up, in betweendigging up fresh details, hideous episodes, from the combats of the pastfew days, which Weixler devoured in breathless attention. 

"What a question!" the commandant of the trench exclaimed, laughing athis audience. "Whether the Italians had heavy losses, too? Do you thinkwe let them pepper us like rabbits? You can easily calculate what thosefellows lost in their eleven attacks if we've melted down to thirty menwithout crawling out of our trench. Just let them go on like that a fewweeks longer and they'll be at the end of their human material. "

Captain Marschner had not wanted to listen. He stood bending over a map, but at the phrase, "human material, " he started violently. It soundedlike a taunt directed at his own thoughts, as if the two men had seeninto him and had agreed with each other to give him a good lesson andshow him how alone he was. 

"Human material!"

In a trench, filled with the stench of dead bodies, shaken by the impactof the shells, stood two men, each himself a stake in the game, andwhile the dice were still being tossed for their very bones, they talkedof--human material! They uttered those ruthless, shameful words withouta shadow of indignation, as though it were natural for their livingbodies to be no more than a gambler's chips in the hands of men whoarrogated to themselves the right to play the game of gods. Withouthesitating they laid their one, irrevocable life at the feet of a powerthat could not prove whether it had known how to place the stakesrightly except by their dead bodies. And the men who were speaking thatway were officers! So where was there a gleam of hope?

Out there, among the simple men, perhaps, the plain cannon fodder? Theywere now crouching resignedly in their places, thinking of home and eachof them still feeling himself a man. He was drawn to his men, to theirdull, silent sadness, to their true greatness, which without pathos andwithout solemnity, in everyday clothes, as it were, patiently awaitedthe hero's death. 

Outside the dugout stood the remnants of the relieved company ready forthe march, always two men abreast with a dead comrade on a tent canvasbetween them. A long procession, profoundly stirring in its silentexpectancy, into which the hissing and crackling of shrapnel and thethunder of grenades fell like a warning from above to those who stillhad their lives. Bitterly, Marschner clenched his fist at thisinsatiableness. 

At that moment the pale sergeant stepped in front of the place where thedead had been piled and frightened Marschner out of his thoughts. 

"Captain, I beg to announce that beside the fourteen dead there arethree seriously wounded men who can't walk--Italians. I have no bearersleft for them. "

"We'll leave them to you as a souvenir, " the trench commandant, who wasjust leaving the dugout with Weixler, laughed in his maundering way. "You can have them dug in at night up there among the communicationtrenches, Captain. When it gets dark, the Italians direct their barragefire farther back, and give you a chance to climb out. To be sure, theywon't lie in peace there under the earth very long, because the shellsrip everything open right away again. I've had to have my poor ensignburied three times over already. "

"How did they get in here anyhow?" Weixler asked, pushing himselfforward. "Did you have a fight in the trench?"

The other lieutenant shook his head proudly. "I should rather say not. The gentlemen never got as far as that. These three tried to cut thewire entanglements night before last, but our machine gun man caught 'emat it and his iron spatter spoiled their little game. Well, there theylay, of course, right under our very noses and they had on the loveliestshoes of bright yellow. My men begrudged 'em those shoes. There--" heended, pointing with his finger at the feet of the pale sergeant--"there you see one pair. But we'll have to start now. March, sergeant!My respects, Captain. The Italians'll open their eyes when they comeover to-night to finish us off comfortably and a hundred and fiftyrifles go off and two brand-new bullet squirters. Ha-ha! Sorry I can'tbe here to see it! Good-by, little man! Good luck!" Humming a merrypopular song he followed his men without looking back, without evenobserving that Marschner accompanied him a little on his way. 

Gaily, as though on a Sunday picnic, the men started on the way, whichled over the terrible field of shards and ruins and the steep, shot-uphill. What hells they must have endured there, in that mole's gallery!The captain remained standing and heaved a deep sigh. It was as if thatlong, grey column slowly winding its way through the trench werecarrying away the last hope. The back of the last soldier, growingsmaller and smaller, was the world. The captain's eyes clung greedily tothat back and measured fearfully the distance to the corner of thetrench from which he must lose sight of it forever. There was still timeto call out a greeting, and by running very fast one might still catchup and hand over a letter. 

Then the last medium disappeared--the last possibility of dividing theworld into two halves. And his yearning recoiled before the endlessspace it had to bridge--and there was nothing else to bridge it but hisyearning. 

Marschner sank into himself as he stood deserted in the empty trench. Hefelt as though he had been hollowed out, and looked about for help, andhis eyes clung to the depression from which the corpses had now beenlifted. Only the three Italians were lying there, the life already gonefrom them. The one showed his face, his mouth was still wide open as fora cry, and his hands dug themselves, as though to ward off pain, intohis unnaturally swollen body. The other two lay with their knees drawnup and their heads between their arms. The naked feet with their greyconvulsed toes stared into the communication trench like things robbed, with a mute accusal. There was a remoteness about these dead bodies, aloneliness, an isolation about their bared feet. A tangled web ofmemories arose, a throng of fleeting faces glimmered in the captain'ssoul--gondoliers of Venice, voluble cabbies, a toothless inn-keeper'swife at Posilipo. Two trips on a vacation in Italy drove an army ofsorrowing figures through his mind. And finally another figure appearedin that ghostly dance of death, his own sister, sitting in a concerthall in Vienna, care-free, listening to music, while her brother laysomewhere stretched out on the ground, rigid in death, an enemy's corpsejust to be kicked aside. 

Shuddering, the captain hastened back down the trench, as though thethree dead men were pursuing him noiselessly on their naked soles. Whenhe reached his own men at last, he felt as if he had arrived at a harborof safety. 

The shells were now falling so thick that there was not a moment's pausebetween the explosions, and all sounds merged into a single, equal, rolling thunder, which made the earth tremble like the hull of a ship. But there was a particularly sharp crashing and splintering from oneshot that hit the trench squarely and whirled the coverings above in alldirections. A few minutes later two groaning men dragged down a corpse, leaned it against the trench wall, and climbed back to their poststhrough the narrow shaft. Marschner saw his sergeant get up and move hislips--then a soldier in the corner arose and took up his rifle andfollowed the two others heavily. It was all so comfortless, sounmercifully businesslike, precisely as when "Next!" breaks into themonotony of the practising in the yard of the barracks, only with thedifference that a little group at once gathered about the dead man, drawn by that shy curiosity which irresistibly attracts simple folk tocorpses and funerals. Most of the men expected the same of him--he sawit in their eyes--that he, too, would go over and pay a last tribute ofrespect to the dead. But he did not want to. He was absolutelydetermined not to learn the fallen man's name. He was bent uponpractising self-mastery at last and remaining indifferent to all smallhappenings. So long as he had not seen the dead man's face nor heard hisname, only a man had fallen in battle, one of the many thousands. If hekept his distance and did not bend over each individual and did not leta definite fate come to his notice, it was not so hard to remainindifferent. 

Stubbornly he walked over to the second shaft leading to the top and forthe first time observed that it had grown quite silent up above. Therewas no longer any screaming or bursting. This silence came upon thedeafening din like a paralyzing weight and filled space with a tenseexpectancy that flickered in all eyes. He wanted to rid himself of thisoppression and crept through the crumbling shaft up to the top. 

The first thing he saw was Weixler's curved back. He was holding hisfield-glass glued to his eyes under cover of a shooting shield. Theothers were also standing as if pasted to their posts, and there wassomething alarming in the motionlessness of their shoulder blades. Allat once a twitching ran through the petrified row. Weixler sprang back, jostled against the captain, and cried out: "They are coming!" Then hestormed to the shaft and blew the alarm whistle. 

Marschner stared after him helplessly. He walked with hesitating stepsto the shield and looked out upon the wide, smoke-covered field, whichcurved beyond the tangle of wires, grey, torn, blood-flecked, like thebloated form of a gigantic corpse. Far in the background the sun wassinking. Its great copper disc already cut in half by the horizon seemedto be growing out of the ground. And against that dazzling backgroundblack silhouettes were dancing like midges under a microscope, likeIndians swinging their tomahawks. They were still mere specks. Sometimesthey disappeared entirely and then leaped high, and came nearer, theirrifles wriggling in the air like the feet of a polyp. Gradually theircries became audible and swelled louder and louder like the far barkingof dogs. When they called "Avanti!" it was a piercing cry, and when thecall "Coraggio!" went through their lines, it changed to a dull, thunderous roll. 

The entire company now stood close-packed up against the slope of thetrench, their faces as of stone, restrained, pale as chalk, with liplessmouths, each man's gun in position--a single beast of prey with ahundred eyes and arms. 

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" Lieutenant Weixler's voiceyelled without pause through the trench. His command seemed to lay itsgrasp on every throat and to hold the fingers moveless that greedilyclasped the triggers. The first hand grenade flew into the trench. Thecaptain saw it coming, then saw a man loosen from the mass, reel towardthe dugout with outstretched arms, bending over, a veil of bloodcovering his face. Then--at last!--it was a relief--came the beatingof the machine guns, and at once the rifles went off, too, like theraging of an angry pack. A cold, repulsive greed lay on all faces. Someof the men cried out aloud in their hate and rage when new groupsemerged out there behind the thinning rows. The barrels of the riflesglowed with heat--and still the rumbling cries of "Coraggio!" camenearer and nearer. 

As though in a frenzy of insanity, the silhouettes hopped about outthere, sprang into the air, fell, and rolled over each other, as thoughthe war dance had only just reached the climax of its paroxysm. 

Then Captain Marschner observed the man next to him let his rifle sinkfor a moment and with hasty, shaking hands insert the bayonet into thesmoking barrel. The captain felt as though he were going to vomit. Heclosed his eyes in dizziness and leaned against the trench wall, and lethimself glide to the earth. Was he to--to see--that? Was he to see menbeing murdered right alongside of him? He tore his revolver from hispocket, emptied it, and threw it away. Now he was defenseless. Andsuddenly he grew calm and rose to his feet, elevated by a wonderfulcomposure, ready to let himself be butchered by one of those pantingbeasts who were storming on, chased by the blind fear of death. Hewanted to die like a man, without hatred, without rage, with cleanhands. 

A hoarse roar, a frightful, dehumanized cry almost beside him wrenchedhis thoughts back into the trench. A broad stream of light and fire, travelling in a steep curve, flowed blindingly down beside him andsprayed over the shoulder of the tall pock-marked tailor of the firstline. In the twinkling of an eye the man's entire left side flared up inflames. With a howl of agony he threw himself to the ground, writhed andscreamed and leaped to his feet again, and ran moaning up and down likea living torch, until he broke down, half-charred, and twitched, andthen lay rigid. Captain Marschner saw him lying there and smelt the odorof burned flesh, and his eyes involuntarily strayed to his own hand onwhich a tiny, white spot just under his thumb reminded him of thetorments he had suffered in his boyhood from a bad burn. 

At that moment a jubilant hurrah roared through the trench, rising froma hundred relieved throats. The attack had been repulsed! LieutenantWeixler had carefully taken aim at the thrower of the liquid fire andhit at the first shot. The liquid fire had risen up like a fountain fromthe falling man's stiffening hand and rained down on his own comrades. Their decimated lines shrank back suddenly before the unexpected dangerand they fled pell-mell, followed by the furious shots from all therifles. 

The men fell down as if lifeless, with slack faces and lusterless eyes, as though some one had turned off the current that had fed those deadcreatures with strength from some unknown source. Some of them leanedagainst the trench wall white as cheese, and held their heads over, andvomited from exhaustion. Marschner also felt his gorge rising and gropedhis way toward the dugout. He wanted to go into his own place now and bealone and somehow relieve himself of the despair that held him in itsgrip. 

"Hello!" Lieutenant Weixler cried unexpectedly through the silence, andbounded over to the left where the machine guns stood. 

The captain turned back again, mounted the ladder, and gazed out intothe foreground of the field. There, right in front of the wire-entanglements, kneeled an Italian. His left arm was hanging down limp, and his right arm was raised beseechingly, and he was crawling towardthem slowly. A little farther back, half hidden by the kneeling man, something kept stirring on the ground. There three wounded men weretrying to creep toward their own trench, pressing close to the ground. One could see very clearly how they sought cover behind corpses and nowand then lay motionless so as to escape discovery by the foe. It was apitiful sight--those God-forsaken creatures surrounded by death, eachmoment like an eternity above them, yet clinging with tooth and nail totheir little remnant of life. 

"Come on! Isn't there a rope somewhere?" an old corporal called downinto the trench. "I'm sorry for the poor devil of an Italian. Let's pullhim in!"

The machine guns interrupted him. The kneeling man beside the wireslistened, started as if to run, and fell upon his face. The earth behindhim rose in dust from the bullets and the others beyond raisedthemselves like snakes, then all three gave a short leap forward and--lay very still. 

For a moment Captain Marschner stood speechless. He opened his lips, butno sound came from his throat. At last his tongue obeyed him and heyelled, with a mad choking fury in his voice:

"Lieutenant Weixler!"

"Yes, sir, " came back unconcernedly. 

Captain Marschner ran toward the lieutenant with clenched fists andscarlet face. 

"Did you fire?" he panted, breathless. 

The lieutenant looked at him in astonishment, placed his hands againstthe seams of his trousers and replied with perfect formality:

"I did, sir. "

Marschner's voice failed him again for a moment. His teeth chattered. His whole body trembled as he stammered:

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself? A soldier doesn't fire at helpless, wounded men. Remember that!"

Weixler went white. 

"I beg to inform you, Captain, that the one who was near our trench washiding the others from us. I couldn't spare him. " Then, with a suddenexplosion of anger, he added defiantly: "Besides, I thought we had quiteenough hungry mouths at home as it is. "

The captain jumped at him like a snapping dog and stamped his foot androared:

"I'm not interested in what you think. I forbid you to shoot at thewounded! As long as I am commanding officer here every wounded man shallbe held sacred, whether he tries to get to us or to return to the enemy. Do you understand me?"

The lieutenant drew himself up haughtily. 

"In that case I must take the liberty, sir, of begging you to hand methat order in writing. I consider it my duty to inflict as much injuryupon the enemy as possible. A man that I let off to-day may be cured andcome back two months later and perhaps kill ten of my comrades. "

For a moment the two men stood still, staring at each other as thoughabout to engage in mortal combat. Then Marschner nodded his head almostimperceptibly, and said in a toneless voice:

"You shall have it in writing. "

He swung on his heel and left. Colored spheres seemed to dance beforehis eyes, and he had to summon all his strength to keep his equilibrium. When at last he reached the dugout, he fell on the box of empty tins asif he had been beaten. His hatred changed slowly into a deep, embitteredsense of discouragement. He knew perfectly well that he was in thewrong. Not at the bar of his conscience! His conscience told him thatthe deed the lieutenant had done was cowardly murder. But he and hisconscience had nothing to say here. They had happened to stray into thisplace and would have to stay in the wrong. What was he to do? If he gavethe order in writing, he would afford Weixler his desired opportunity ofpushing himself forward and invite an investigation of his own conduct. He begrudged the malicious creature that triumph. Perhaps it were betterto make an end of the whole business by going to the brigade staff andtelling the exalted gentlemen there frankly to their faces that he couldno longer be a witness to that bloody firing, that he could not hunt menlike wild beasts, no matter what uniform they happened to wear. Then, atleast, this playing at hide and seek would end. Let them shoot him, ifthey wanted to, or hang him like a common felon. He would show them thathe knew how to die. 

He walked out into the trench firmly, and ordered a soldier to summonLieutenant Weixler. Now it was so clear within him and so calm. He heardthe hellish shooting that the Italians were again directing at thetrench and went forward slowly like a man out promenading. 

"They're throwing heavy mines at us now, Captain, " the old corporalannounced, and looked at Marschner in despair. But Marschner went byunmoved. All that no longer mattered to him. The lieutenant would takeover the command. That was what he was going to tell him. He couldhardly await the moment to relieve himself of the responsibility. 

As Weixler delayed coming, he crept up through the shaft to the top. 

The man's small, evil eyes flew to meet him and sought the written orderin his hand. The captain acted as though he did not notice the questionin his look, and said imperiously:

"Lieutenant, I turn the command of the company over to you until----" Ashort roar of unheard-of violence cut short his speech. He had thefeeling, "That will hit me, " and that very instant he saw something likea black whale rush down in front of his eyes from out of the heavens andplunge head foremost into the trench wall behind him. Then a crateropened up in the earth, a sea of flame that raised him up and filled hislungs with fire. 

On slowly recovering his consciousness he found himself buried under ahuge mound of earth, with only his head and his left arm free. He had nofeeling in his other limbs. His whole body had grown weightless. Hecould not find his legs. Nothing was there that he could move. But therewas a burning and burrowing that came from somewhere in his brain, scorched his forehead, and made his tongue swell into a heavy, chokinglump. 

"Water!" he moaned. Was there no one there who could pour a drop ofmoisture into the burning hollow of his mouth? No one at all? Then wherewas Weixler? He must be near by. Or else--was it possible that Weixlerwas wounded too? Marschner wanted to jump up and find out what hadhappened to Weixler--he wanted to----

Like an overburdened steam-crane his left hand struggled toward hishead, and when he at last succeeded in pushing it under his neck, hefelt with a shudder that his skull offered no resistance and his handslid into a warm, soft mush, and his hair, pasty with coagulated blood, stuck to his fingers like warm, moist felt. 

"Dying!" went through him with a chill. To die there--all alone. AndWeixler? He had to find out what had happened to--happened to----

With a superhuman effort he propped his head up on his left hand highenough to have a view of a few paces along the trench. Now he sawWeixler, with his back turned, leaning on his right side against thetrench wall, standing there crookedly, his left hand pressed against hisbody, his shoulders hunched as if he had a cramp. The captain raisedhimself a little higher and saw the ground and a broad, dark shadow thatWeixler cast. Blood? He was bleeding? Or what? Surely that was blood. Itcouldn't be anything but blood. And yet it stretched out so peculiarlyand drew itself like a thin, red thread up to Weixler, up to where hishand pressed his body as though he wanted to pull up the roots thatbound him to the earth. 

The captain _had_ to see! He pulled his head farther out from underthe mound--and uttered a hoarse cry, a cry of infinite horror. Thewretched man was dragging his entrails behind him!

"Weixler!" burst from him in a shudder of compassion. 

The man turned slowly, looked down at Marschner questioningly, pale, sad, with frightened eyes. He stood like that only the fraction of asecond, then he lost his balance, reeled, and fell down, and was lostfrom the captain's circle of vision. Their glances scarcely had time tocross, the pallid face had merely flitted by. And yet it stood there, remained fixed in the air, with a mild, soft, plaintive expression aboutthe narrow lips, an unforgettable air of gentle anxious resignation. 

"He is suffering!" flashed through Marschner. "He is suffering!"--itexulted him. And a glow suffused his pallor. His fingers, sticky withblood, seemed to caress the air, until his head sank backward, and hiseyes broke. 

The first soldiers who penetrated the towering mound of earth to wherehe lay found him dead. But in spite of his ghastly wound, a contented, almost happy smile hovered about his lips. 

III

THE VICTOR

On the big square before the old courthouse, which now served asregimental headquarters and bore the magic letters A. O. K. As a sort ofcabalistic sign on its front, a military band played every afternoonfrom three to four at command of His Excellency. This little diversionwas meant to compensate the civilian population for the manyinconveniences that the quartering of several hundreds of staff officersand a number of lesser officers inevitably brought upon them. Then, too, according to His Excellency, such an institution helped considerably topromote the popularity of the army and inspire patriotism in schoolchildren and the masses. In the interest of the right conduct of the warthe strict commander deemed it highly essential to foster a rightattitude in the public and to encourage friendly relations betweenmilitary and civilian authorities--while fully preserving his ownprivileges. It was essential to a successful continuation of the war. Incidentally, the fact that the staff officers, with His Excellency attheir head, usually took their black coffee at just about this time hadhelped a good deal to bring about these afternoon concerts. 

It was indeed delightful to sit in the shade of the centenarian plane-trees, whose intertwining branches overarched the entire square like thenave of a cathedral. The autumn sun cast a dull glow on the walls of thehouses round about, and shed golden rings through the thick foliage onthe small round tables arrayed in long rows in front of the coffeehouse. There was a reserved row for the staff officers set in snowy linens, with little flower vases and fresh crisp cakes, which the sergeant ofthe commissary brought punctually at three o'clock every day from thefield bakery, where they had been baked with particular care under thepersonal supervision of the chef especially for His Excellency andstaff. 

It was a beautiful gay picture of lively, varied metropolitan life thatsurged about the music pavilion. Every one seemed as joyous and carefreeas on the Graben in Vienna on a sunny spring Sunday in times ofundisturbed peace. The children crowded around the orchestra, beat themeasure, and applauded enthusiastically after every piece. The streetsleading into the square were filled with giggling girls and studentswearing bright caps; while the _haute-volée_, the wives of theresident officials and merchants, sat in the confectioner's shop on thesquare, eagerly awaiting an opportunity to show their righteousindignation at the daring millinery, transparent hose, and little morethan knee-length skirts of a certain class of women who had forced theirway into the town and, despite all protests and orders, were shamelesslyplying their trade in broad daylight. 

But the chief tone was given by the transient officers. Whether onfurlough or on their way back to the front, they all had to pass throughthis town, and enjoyed in deep draughts this first or last day offreedom. Besides, if anything was needed at the front--horse-shoe nails, saddle-soap, sanitary appliances, or bottled beer--this first little"big town" was the quickest, most convenient place to buy it in. Anunlucky or an unpopular man merely received a commendation for hisbravery, and that settled him. But the man who enjoyed his commandingofficer's favor was given the preference to do the shopping here as areward. And an amazing ingenuity developed in discovering immediatenecessities. A secret arithmetical relation undeniably existed betweenthe consumption of charcoal, axle grease, etc. , by individual troopdivisions and the distance of their outposts from this favoriteprovisioning station. 

Of course, the pleasure did not last long. There was just enough timefor a hot tub-bath, for showing off one's best newly-pressed uniformonce or twice on the main streets, for taking two meals at a tablespread with a tablecloth, and for spending a short night in acomfortable bed--with, or, if the man could not help it, withoutcaresses--and then off again, depressed and irritable, off to themaddeningly overcrowded railroad station, back to the front, into thedamp trench or the sunbaked block house. 

The greed of life in these young officers, who promenaded, hungry-eyed, through the town, the racing of their blood, like a diver who fills hislungs full in one second, had gradually infected the entire, boresomelittle place. It tingled, it foamed, it enriched itself and becamefrivolous; it could not get enough sensations, now that it stood in thecenter of world activities and had a claim upon real events. 

Close-packed, the crowd surged past the music in holiday attire andholiday mood on this ordinary week-day, quivering to the rhythm of theBlue Danube Waltz, which the orchestra was playing catchingly, with aroll of drums and a clash of cymbals. The whole spectacle brought tomind the goings-on behind the scenes in a huge playhouse during theperformance of a tragedy with choruses and mob scenes. Nothing was seenor heard here of the sanguinary piece being enacted at the front. Thefeatures of the actors relaxed, they rested, or threw themselves intothe gay hubbub, heartily glad not to know how the tragedy wasprogressing; exactly as real actors behind the scenes fall back intotheir unprofessional selves until they get their next cue. 

Sitting in the shade of the old trees, over coffee and cigars, comfortably watching these doings, one might easily be deluded intothinking that the drama taking place at the front was nothing but ajolly spectacular play. From this point of view the whole war showed uplike a life-giving stream that washes orchestras ashore, brings wealthand gaiety to the people, is navigated by promenading officers, anddirected by portly, comfortable generals. No suggestion of its bloodyside, no roar of artillery reaching your ears, no wounded soldierdragging in his personal wretchedness and so striking a false note inthe general jollification. 

Of course, it had not always been like that. In the first days, when thedaily concert still had the charm of novelty, all the regular, emergencyand reserve hospitals in the neighborhood had poured their vast numberof convalescents and slightly wounded men into the square. But thatlasted only two days. Then His Excellency summoned the head armyphysician to a short interview and in sharp terms made it clear to thecrushed culprit what an unfavorable influence such a sight would haveupon the public, and expressed the hope that men wearing bandages, ormaimed men, or any men who might have a depressing effect on the generalwar enthusiasm, should henceforth remain in the hospitals. 

He was not defrauded of his hope. No disagreeable sight ever againmarred his pleasure when, with his favorite Havana between his teeth, hegazed past the long row of his subordinates out on the street. No oneever went by without casting a shy, deferential side-glance at theomnipotent director of battles, who sat there like any other ordinaryhuman being, sipping his coffee, although he was the celebrated GeneralX, unlimited master of hundreds of thousands of human lives, the man thepapers liked to call the "Victor of ----. " There was not a human beingin the town whose fate he could not have changed with one stroke of hispen. There was nothing he could not promote or destroy as he saw fit. His good will meant orders for army supplies and wealth, or distinctionand advancement; his ill will meant no prospects at all, or an order tomarch along the way that led to certain death. 

Leaning back comfortably in the large wicker chair, a chair destined inall likelihood some day to become an object of historic interest, thePowerful One jested gaily with the wife of his adjutant. He pointed tothe street, where the crowds surged in the brilliant sunshine, and saidwith a sort of satisfied, triumphant delight in his tone:

"Just look! I should like to show this picture to our pacifists, whoalways act as though war were nothing but a hideous carnage. You shouldhave seen this hole in peace times. It was enough to put you to sleep. Why, the porter at the corner is earning more to-day than the biggestmerchant used to earn before the war. And have you noticed the youngfellows who come back from the front? Sunburnt, healthy and happy! Mostof them before the war were employed in offices. They held themselvesbadly and were dissipated and looked cheesy. I assure you, the world hasnever been so healthy as it is now. But if you look at your newspapers, you read about a world-catastrophe, about a blood-drained Europe, and awhole lot of other stuff. "

He raised his bushy white eyebrows until they reached the middle of hisbulging forehead, and his small, piercing black eyes skimmed observantlyover the faces of those present. 

His Excellency's pronouncement was a suggestion to the others and wasimmediately taken up. At every table the conversation grew animated, thebenefits of the war were told over, and the wits cracked jokes at theexpense of the pacifists. There was not a single man in the wholeassemblage who did not owe at least two blessings to the war: financialindependence and such munificence of living as only much-envied moneymagnates have allotted to them in times of peace. Among this circle ofpeople the war wore the mask of a Santa Claus with a bag full ofwonderful gifts on his back and assignments for brilliant careers in hishand. To be sure here and there a gentleman was to be seen wearing acrêpe-band on his sleeve for a brother or a brother-in-law who, asofficer, had seen that other aspect of the war, the Gorgon's face. 

Yet the Gorgon's face was so far away, more than sixty miles in a bee-line, and an occasional excursion in its vicinity was an exciting littleadventure, a brief titillation of the nerves. Inside an hour theautomobile raced back to safety, back to the bath-tub, and youpromenaded asphalt streets again in shining pumps. So, who would refrainfrom joining in the hymn of praise to His Excellency?

The mighty man contentedly listened a while longer to the babel ofvoices aroused by what he had said, then gradually sank back into hisreflections, and gazed ahead of him seriously. He saw the sunbeamssifting through the thick foliage and glittering on the crosses andstars that covered the left half of his chest in three close rows. Itwas a magnificent and complete collection of every decoration that therulers of four great empires had to bestow upon a man for heroism, contempt of death, and high merit. There was no honor left for theVictor of ---- still to aspire to. And only eleven short months of warhad cast all that at his feet. It was the harvest of but a single yearof war. Thirty-nine years of his life had previously gone in the servicein tedious monotony, in an eternal struggle with sordid everyday cares. He had worn himself out over all the exigencies of a petty bourgeoisexistence, like a poor man ashamed of his poverty, making patheticefforts to conceal a tear in his clothes and always seeing the telltalehole staring out from under the covering. For thirty-nine years he hadnever swerved from disciplining himself to abstemiousness, and there wasmuch gold on his uniform, but very little in his pocket. As a matter offact, he had been quite ready for some time to quit. He was thoroughlytired of the cheap pleasure of tyrannizing over the young officers onthe drill ground. 

But then the miracle occurred! Over night the grouchy, obscure oldgentleman changed into a sort of national hero, a European celebrity. Hewas "the Victor of ----!" It was like in a fairy tale, when the goodfairy appears and frees the enchanted prince from his hideous disguise, and he emerges in his glowing youth, surrounded by knights and lackeys, and enters his magnificent castle. 

To he sure the miracle had not brought the general the glow of youth. But it put elasticity into him. The eventful year had given him ashaking up, and his veins pulsed with the joy of life and the energy forwork of a man in his prime. It was as a sovereign that he sat there inthe shadow of the plane-trees, with good fortune sparkling on his chestand a city lying at his feet. Nothing, not a single thing, was lackingto make the fairy tale perfect. 

In front of the coffee-house, guarded by two sturdy corporals, restedthe great grey beast, with the lungs of a hundred horses in its chest, awaiting the cranking-up to rush its master off to his castle high abovetown and valley. Where were the days when, with his general's stripes onhis trousers, he took the street-car to his home, befitting his stationin life, a six-room apartment that was really a five-room apartment plusa closet? Where was all that? Centuries had given their noblest powers, generations had expended their artistic skill in filling the castlerequisitioned for His Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief of the ----thArmy, with the choicest treasure. Sun and time had done their best tomellow the dazzle of the accumulated wealth till it shone in subduedgrandeur as through a delicate veil. Any man master in that house, whomounted those broad steps and shouted his wishes in those aristocraticrooms, necessarily felt like a king and could not take the war in anyother way than as a glorious fairy tale. 

Indeed, was there ever a royal household that approached the miraculousmore closely? In the kitchen reigned a master of the culinary art, thechef of the best hotel in the country, who in other circumstances wouldnot have been satisfied with double the wages of a general and was nowgetting only a dollar a day. Yet he was using every bit of his skill. Hehad never been so eager to please the palate of him whom he served. Theroast he prepared was the finest piece of meat to be selected from amongthe two hundred oxen that daily gave up their lives to the army for thefatherland. The men who served the roast on silver platters, wrought bypupils of Benvenuto for the ancestors of the house, were generals oftheir trade, who in peace times had had their clothes built in London, and stood about tremblingly awaiting each sign from their master. Andthis entire retinue, this whole princely household, functioned quiteautomatically, and--entirely without cost! The master for whom everyone slaved never once had to perform that inevitable nuisance of puttinghis hand in his pocket to draw out his purse. The gasoline circulatedinexhaustibly through the veins of the three motor cars, which loungedday and night on the marble flagging of the courtyard. As by magiceverything flowed in that eye and palate could desire. 

No servant asked for wages, everything seemed to be there of itself, asin fairy castles where it is enough to wish for a thing in order to haveit. 

But that was not all. It was not the whole of the miracle that the tablespread itself every day of the month and the store-rooms filledthemselves with provisions. When the first of the month came round, bank-notes instead of bills came fluttering into the house. 

No worry, no disputing, no stinting of one's self to be borne with asigh. With an air of boredom one stuffed his pockets with greenbacks, which were really quite superfluous in this lazy man's paradise that thewar had opened up to its vassals. 

One single lowering cloud now and then streaked the shining firmament ofthis wonderland and cast its shadow on the brow of His Excellency. Sometimes his pure joy was disturbed by the thought that the fairy talemight give way to reality and he might be awakened from the gloriousdream. It was not peace that His Excellency dreaded. He never eventhought of peace. But what if the wall so artfully constructed out ofhuman bodies should begin to totter some day? What if the enemy were topenetrate all the fortifications, and discipline were to give way topanic, and the mighty wall should dissolve into its component parts, human beings fleeing madly to save their lives? Then the "Victor of ----, "the almighty fairy tale king, would sink back again into the sordidcommonplace of old. He would have to eke out his existence in someobscure corner, crowd his trophies into some modest apartment, andcontent himself, like other discharged officers, with being acoffeehouse king. Were he to suffer a single defeat, the world wouldinstantly forget its enthusiasm. Another general would assume the reign, another sovereign would fly through the town in a motor car, and thevast retinue of servants would reverently bow before their new ruler. The old one would be nothing but a past episode, a scarecrow revealed, which any sparrow impudently besmirches. 

The general's pudgy hand involuntarily clenched itself, and the dreadedfrown, the "storm-signal" that his own soldiers, as well as the enemy, had learned to fear, appeared for a moment on his prominent forehead. Then his face cleared again, and His Excellency looked around proudly. 

No! The Victor of ---- was not afraid. His wall stood firm and swayednot. For three months every report that emissaries brought to camp hadtold of the enormous preparations being made by the enemy. For threemonths they had been storing up ammunition and gathering together theirforces for the tremendous offensive. And the offensive had begun thenight before. The general knew that the crowd gaily thronging in the sunwould not read in the newspaper till the next morning that out at thefront a fierce battle had been raging for the past twenty hours, andhardly sixty miles from the promenade shells were bursting withoutcease, and a heavy rain of hot iron was pouring down upon his soldiers. Three infantry attacks had already been reported as repulsed, and nowthe artillery was hammering with frenzied fury, a prologue to freshconflicts during the night. 

Well, let them come!

With a jerk, His Excellency sat up, and while his fingers beat on thetable in tune to the Blue Danube, a tense expression came into his face, as though he could hear the terrific drumfire raging at the front like ahurricane. His preparations had been made: the human reservoir had beenfilled to overflowing. Two hundred thousand strong young lads of thevery right age lay behind the lines ready at the proper moment to bethrown in front of the steam-roller until it caught and stuck in a marshof blood and bones. Just let them come! The more, the merrier! TheVictor of ---- was prepared to add another branch to his laurels, andhis eyes sparkled like the medals on his breast. 

His adjutant got up from the table next to his, approached hesitatingly, and whispered a few words in His Excellency's ear. 

The great man shook his head, waving the adjutant off. 

"It is an important foreign newspaper, Your Excellency, " the adjutanturged; and when his commander still waved him aside, he addedsignificantly: "The gentleman has brought a letter of recommendationfrom headquarters, Your Excellency. "

At this the general finally gave in, arose with a sigh, and said, halfin jest, half in annoyance to the lady beside him:

"A drumfire would be more welcome!" Then he followed his adjutant andshook hands jovially with the bald civilian, who popped up from his seatand bent at the middle like a penknife snapping shut. His Excellencyinvited him to be seated. 

The war correspondent stammered a few words of admiration, and openedhis note-book expectantly, a whole string of questions on his lips. ButHis Excellency did not let him speak. In the course of time he hadconstructed for occasions like this a speech in which every point waswell thought out and which made a simple impression. He delivered itnow, speaking with emphasis and pausing occasionally to recall what camenext. 

To begin with he spoke of his brave soldiers, praising their courage, their contempt of death, their wonderful deeds of valor. Then heexpressed regret at the impossibility of rewarding each soldieraccording to his merits, and--this in a raised voice--invoked thefatherland's eternal gratitude for such loyalty and self-abnegation evenunto death. Pointing to the heavy crop of medals on his chest, heexplained that the distinctions awarded him were really an honor done tohis men. Finally he wove in a few well-chosen remarks complimenting theenemy's fighting ability and cautious leadership, and concluded with anexpression of his unshakable confidence in ultimate victory. 

The newspaper man listened respectfully and occasionally jotted down anote. The main thing, of course, was to observe the Great One'sappearance, his manner of speech, his gestures, and to sum up hispersonality in a few striking phrases. 

His Excellency now discarded his military role, and changed himself fromthe Victor of ---- into the man of the world. 

"You are going to the front now?" he asked with a courteous smile, andresponded to the correspondent's enthusiastic "Yes" with a deep, melancholy sigh. 

"How fortunate you are! I envy you. You see, the tragedy in the life ofthe general of to-day is that he cannot lead his men personally into thefray. He spends his whole life preparing for war, he is a soldier inbody and soul, and yet he knows the excitement of battle only fromhearsay. "

The correspondent was delighted with this subjective utterance which hehad managed to evoke. Now he could show the commander in the sympatheticrôle of one who renounces, one who cannot always do as he would. He bentover his note-book for an instant. When he looked up again he found tohis astonishment that His Excellency's face had completely changed. Hisbrow was furrowed, his eyes stared wide-open with an anxiously expectantlook in them at something back of the correspondent. 

The correspondent turned and saw a pale, emaciated infantry captainmaking straight toward His Excellency. The man was grinning and he had apeculiar shambling walk. He came closer and closer, and stared withglassy, glaring eyes, and laughed an ugly idiotic laugh. The adjutantstarted up from his seat frightened. The veins on His Excellency'sforehead swelled up like ropes. The correspondent saw an assassinationcoming and turned pale. The uncanny captain swayed to within a foot ortwo of the general and his adjutant, then stood still, giggledfoolishly, and snatched at the orders on His Excellency's chest like achild snatching at a beam of light. 

"Beautiful--shines beautifully--" he gurgled in a thick voice. Then hepointed his frightfully thin, trembling forefinger up at the sun andshrieked, "Sun!" Next he snatched at the medals again and said, "Shinesbeautifully. " And all the while his restless glance wandered hither andthither as if looking for something, and his ugly, bestial laughrepeated itself after each word. 

His Excellency's right fist was up in the air ready for a blow at thefellow's chest for approaching him so disrespectfully, but, instead, helaid his hand soothingly on the poor idiot's shoulder. 

"I suppose you have come from the hospital to listen to the music, Captain?" he said, winking to his adjutant. "It's a long ride to thehospital in the street-car. Take my automobile. It's quicker. "

"Auto--quicker, " echoed the lunatic with his hideous laugh. He patientlylet himself be taken by the arm and led away. He turned round once witha grin at the glittering medals, but the adjutant pulled him along. 

The general followed them with his eyes until they entered the machine. The "storm-signal" was hoisted ominously between his eyebrows. He wasboiling with rage at such carelessness in allowing a creature like thatto walk abroad freely. But in the nick of time he remembered thecivilian at his side, and controlled himself, and said with a shrug ofthe shoulders:

"Yes, these are some of the sad aspects of the war. You see, it is justbecause of such things that the leader must stay behind, where nothingappeals to his heart. No general could ever summon the necessaryseverity to direct a war if he had to witness all the misery at thefront. "

"Very interesting, " the correspondent breathed gratefully, and closedhis book. "I fear I have already taken up too much of Your Excellency'svaluable time, but may I be permitted one more question? When does YourExcellency hope for peace?"

The general started, bit his underlip, and glanced aside with a lookthat would have made every staff officer of the ----th Army shake in hisboots. With a visible effort he put on his polite smile and pointedacross the square to the open portals of the old cathedral. 

"The only advice I can give is for you to go over there and ask ourHeavenly Father. He is the only one who can answer that question. "

A friendly nod, a hearty handshake, then His Excellency strode to hisoffice across the square amid the respectful salutations of the crowd. When he entered the building the dreaded furrow cleaving his brow wasdeeper than ever. An orderly tremblingly conducted him to the office ofthe head army physician. For several minutes the entire house held itsbreath while the voice of the Mighty One thundered through thecorridors. He ordered the fine old physician to come to his table as ifhe were his secretary, and dictated a decree forbidding all the inmatesof the hospitals, without distinction or exception, whether sick orwounded, to leave the hospital premises. "For"--the decree concluded--"if a man is ill, he belongs in bed, and if he feels strong enough to goto town and sit in the coffee-house, he should report at the front, where his duty calls him. "

This pacing to and fro with clinking spurs and this thundering at thecowering old doctor calmed his anger. The storm had about blown overwhen unfortunately the general's notice was drawn to the report from thebrigade that was being most heavily beset by the enemy and had suffereddesperate losses and was holding its post only in order to make theenterprise as costly as possible to the advancing enemy. Behind it themines had already been laid, and a whole new division was already inwait in subterranean hiding ready to prepare a little surprise for theenemy after the doomed brigade had gone to its destruction. Of course, the general had not considered it necessary to inform the brigadier thathe was holding a lost post and all he was to do was to sell his hide asdearly as possible. The longer the struggle raged the better! And menfight so much more stubbornly if they hope for relief until the verylast moment. 

All this His Excellency himself had ordained, and he was really greatlyrejoiced that the brigade was still holding out after three overwhelminginfantry charges. But now a report lay before him which went against allmilitary tradition; and it brought back the storm that had been about tosubside. 

The major-general (His Excellency made careful note of his name)described the frightful effect of the drumfire in a nervous, talkativeway that was most unmilitary. Instead of confining himself to astatement of numbers, he explained at length how his brigade had beendecimated and his men's power of resistance was gone. He concluded hisreport by begging for reinforcements, else it would be impossible forthe remnant of his company to withstand the attack to take place thatnight. 

"Impossible? Impossible?" His Excellency blared like a trumpet into theears of the gentlemen standing motionless around him. "Impossible? Sincewhen is the commander instructed by his subordinates as to what ispossible and what is not?"

Blue in the face with rage he took a pen and wrote this single sentencein answer to the report: "The sector is to be held. " Underneath hesigned his name in the perpendicular scrawl that every school child knewfrom the picture card of the "Victor of ----. " He himself put theenvelope into the motor-cyclist's hand for it to be taken to thewireless station as the telephone wires of the brigade had long sincebeen shot into the ground. Then he blustered like a storm cloud fromroom to room, stayed half an hour in the card room, had a shortinterview with the chief of the staff, and asked to have the eveningreports sent to the castle. When his rumbling "Good night, gentlemen!"at last resounded in the large hall under the dome, every one heaved asigh of relief. The guard stood at attention, the chauffeur started themotor, and the big machine plunged into the street with a bellow like awild beast's. Panting and tooting, it darted its way through the narrowstreets out into the open, where the castle like a fairy palace lookeddown into the misty valley below with its pearly rows of illuminatedwindows. 

With his coat collar turned up, His Excellency sat in the car andreflected as he usually did at this time on the things that had happenedduring the day. The correspondent came to his mind and the man's stupidquestion, "When does Your Excellency hope for peace?" Hope? Was itcredible that a man who must have some standing in his profession, elsehe never would have received a letter of recommendation fromheadquarters, had so little suspicion of how contrary that was to everysoldierly feeling? Hope for peace? What good was a general to expectfrom peace? Could this civilian not comprehend that a commanding generalreally commanded, was really a general, just in times of war, while intimes of peace he was like a strict teacher in galloons, an old dufferwho occasionally shouted himself hoarse out of pure ennui? Was he tolong for that dreary treadmill existence again? Was he to hope for thetime--to please the gentlemen civilians--when he, the victorious leaderof the ----th Army, would be used again merely for reviews? Was he toawait impatiently going back to that other hopeless struggle between ameager salary and a life polished for show, a struggle in which the lackof money always came out triumphant?

The general leaned back on the cushioned seat in annoyance. 

Suddenly the car stopped with a jerk right in the middle of the road. The general started up in surprise and was about to question thechauffeur, when the first big drops of rain fell on his helmet. It wasthe same storm that earlier in the afternoon had given the men at thefront a short respite. 

The two corporals jumped out and quickly put up the top. His Excellencysat stark upright, leaned his ear to the wind, and listened attentively. Mingled with the rushing sound of the wind he caught quite clearly, butvery--very faintly a dull growling, a hollow, scarcely audiblepounding, like the distant echo of trees being chopped down in thewoods. 

Drumfire!

His Excellency's eyes brightened. A gleam of inner satisfaction passedover his face so recently clouded with vexation. 

Thank God! There still was war!

IV

MY COMRADE

(_A Diary_)

This world war has given me a comrade, too. You couldn't find a betterone. 

It is exactly fourteen months ago that I met him for the first time in asmall piece of woods near the road to Goerz. Since then he has neverleft my side for a single moment. We sat up together hundreds of nightsthrough, and still he walks beside me steadfastly. 

Not that he intrudes himself upon me. On the contrary. Heconscientiously keeps the distance that separates him, the commonsoldier, from the officer that he must respect in me. Strictly accordingto regulations he stands three paces off in some corner or behind somecolumn and only dares to cast his shy glances at me. 

He simply wants to be near me. That's all he asks for, just for me tolet him be in my presence. 

Sometimes I close my eyes to be by myself again, quite by myself for afew moments, as I used to be before the war. Then he fixes his gaze uponme so firmly and penetratingly and with such obstinate, reproachfulinsistence that it burns into my back, settles under my eyelids, and sosteeps my being with the picture of him that I look round, if a littletune has passed without his reminding me of his presence. 

He has gnawed his way into me, he has taken up his abode within me. Hesits inside of me like the mysterious magician at moving-picture showswho turns the crank inside of the black booth above the heads of thespectators. He casts his picture through my eyes upon every wall, everycurtain, every flat surface that my eyes fall on. 

But even when there is no background for his picture, even when Ifrantically look out of the window and stare into the distance so as tobe rid of him for a short while, even then he is there, hovering infront of me as though impaled upon the lance of my gaze, like a bannerswaying at the head of a parade. If X-rays could penetrate the skull, one would find his picture woven into my brain in vague outline, likethe figures in old tapestries. 

I remember a trip I took before the war from Munich to Vienna on theOriental Express. I looked out upon the autumnal mellowness of thecountry around the Bavarian lakes and the golden glow of the WienerWald. But across all this glory that I drank in leaning back on thecomfortable seat in luxurious contentment, there steadily ran an uglyblack spot--a flaw in the window-pane. That is the way my obstinatecomrade flits across woods and walls, stands still when I stand still, dances over the faces of passers-by, over the asphalt paving wet fromthe rain, over everything my eyes happen to fall upon. He interposeshimself between me and the world, just like that flaw in the window-pane, which degraded everything I saw to the quality of the backgroundthat it made. 

The physicians, of course, know better. They do not believe that Helives in me and stays by me like a sworn comrade. From the standpoint ofscience it rests with me not to drag him round any longer, but to givehim his dismissal, precisely as I might have freed myself from theannoying spot by angrily smashing the window-pane. The physicians do notbelieve that one human being can unite himself at death with anotherhuman being and continue to live on in him with obstinate persistence. It is their opinion that a man standing at a window should see the houseopposite but never the wall of the room behind his back. 

The physicians only believe in things that _are_. Suchsuperstitions as that a man can carry dead men within him and see themstanding in front of him so distinctly that they hide a picture behindthem from his sight, do not come within the range of the gentlemen'sreasoning. In their lives death plays no part. A patient who dies ceasesto be a patient. And what does the day know of the night, though the oneforever succeeds the other?

But I know it is not I who forcibly drag the dead comrade through mylife. I know that the dead man's life within me is stronger than my ownlife. It may be that the shapes I see flitting across the wall papers, cowering in corners and staring into the lighted room from darkbalconies, and knocking so hard on the windows that the panes rattle, are only visions and nothing more. Where do they come from? _My_brain furnishes the picture, _my_ eyes provide the projection, butit is the dead man that sits at the crank. He tends to the film. Theshow begins when it suits Him and does not stop as long as He turns thecrank. How can I help seeing what He shows me? If I close my eyes thepicture falls upon the inside of my lids, and the drama plays inside ofme instead of dancing far away over doors and walls. 

I should be the stronger of the two, they say. But you cannot kill adead man, the physicians should know that. 

Are not the paintings by Titian and Michael Angelo still hanging in themuseums centuries after Titian and Michael Angelo lived? And thepictures that a dying man chiseled into my brain fourteen months agowith the prodigious strength of his final agony--are they supposed todisappear simply because the man that created them is lying in hissoldier's grave?

Who, when he reads or hears the word "woods, " does not see some woods hehas once walked through or looked out on from a train window? Or when aman speaks of his dead father does he not see the face that has longbeen rotting in the grave appear again, now stern, now gentle, now inthe rigidity of the last moments? What would our whole existence bewithout these visions which, each at its own word, rise up for momentsout of oblivion as if in the glare of a flashlight?

Sick? Of course. The world is sore, and will have no words or picturesthat do not have reference to the wholesale graves. Not for a moment canthe comrade within me join the rest of the dead, because everything thathappens is as a flashlight falling upon him. There's the newspaper eachmorning to begin with: "Ships sunk, " "Attacks repulsed. " And immediatelythe film reels off a whirl of gasping, struggling men, fingers risingout of mountainous waves grasping for life once more, faces disfiguredby pain and fury. Every conversation that one overhears, every shopwindow, every breath that is drawn is a reminder of the wholesalecarnage. Even the silence of the night is a reminder. Does not each tickof the second-hand mark the death rattle of thousands of men? In orderto hear the hell raging yonder on the other side of the thick wall ofair, is it not enough to know of chins blown off, throats cut open, andcorpses locked in a death embrace?

If a man were lying comfortably in bed and then found out for certainthat some one next door was being murdered, would you say he was sick ifhe jumped up out of bed with his heart pounding? And are we anything butnext door to the places where thousands duck down in frantic terror, where the earth spits mangled fragments of bodies up into the sky, andthe sky hammers down on the earth with fists of iron? Can a man live ata distance from his crucified self when the whole world resounds withreminders of these horrors?

No!

It is the others that are sick. They are sick who gloat over news ofvictories and see conquered miles of territory rise resplendent abovemounds of corpses. They are sick who stretch a wall of flags betweenthemselves and their humanity so as not to know what crimes are beingcommitted against their brothers in the beyond that they call "thefront. " Every man is sick who still can think, talk, discuss, sleep, knowing that other men holding their own entrails in their hands arecrawling like half-crushed worms across the furrows in the fields andbefore they reach the stations for the wounded are dying off likeanimals, while somewhere, far away, a woman with passionate longing isdreaming beside an empty bed. All those are sick who can fail to hearthe moaning, the gnashing of teeth, the howling, the crashing andbursting, the wailing and cursing and agonizing in death, because themurmur of everyday affairs is around them or the blissful silence ofnight. 

It is the deaf and the blind that are sick, not I!

It is the dull ones that are sick, those whose souls sing neithercompassion for others nor their own anger. All those numerous people aresick who, like a violin without strings, merely echo every sound. Orwould you say that the man whose memory is like a photographic plate onwhich the light has fallen and which cannot record any more impressions, is the healthy man? Is not memory the very highest possession of everyhuman being? It is the treasure that animals do not own, because theyare incapable of holding the past and reviving it. 

Am I to be cured of my memory as from an illness? Why, without my memoryI would not be myself, because every man is built up of his memories andreally lives only as long as he goes through life like a loaded camera. Supposing I could not tell where I lived in my childhood, what color myfather's eyes and my mother's hair were, and supposing at any momentthat I were called upon to give an account, I could not turn the leavesof the past and point to the right picture, how quick they would be todiagnose my case as feeblemindedness, or imbecility. Then, to beconsidered mentally normal, must one treat one's brain like a slate tobe sponged off and be able at command to tear out pictures that haveburned the most hideous misery into the soul, and throw them away as onedoes leaves from an album of photographs?

One man died before my eyes, he died hard, torn asunder after afrightful struggle between the two Titans, Life and Death. Am I sick, then, if I experience all over again all the phases of his agonizing--preserved in my brain like snapshots--as long as every happeninginexorably opens the pages of this series? And the other people, arethey well, those, I mean, who skip the pages as though they were blankthat record the dismemberment, the mutilation, the crushing of theirbrothers, the slow writhing to death of men caught in barbed wireentanglements?

Tell me, my dear doctors, at just what point am I to begin to forget?

Am I to forget I was in the war? Am I to forget the moment in the smokyrailway station when I leaned out of the car window and saw my boy ashenwhite, with compressed lips, standing beside his mother, and I made apoor show of cheerfulness and talked of seeing them soon again, while myeyes greedily searched the features of my wife and child, and my souldrank in the picture of them like parched lips after a many days' marchdrinking in the water so madly longed for? Am I to forget the chokingand the bitterness in my mouth when the train began to move and thedistance swallowed up my child, my wife, my world?

And the whole ride to death, when I was the only military traveler in acar full of happy family men off for a summer Sunday in the country--amI to tear it out of my memory like so much cumbersome waste paper? Am Ito forget how I felt when it grew quieter at each station, as thoughlife were crumbling away, bit by bit, until at midnight only one or twosleepy soldiers remained in my coach and an ashen young face drawn withsorrow hovered about the flickering lamplight? Must one actually be sickif it is like an incurable wound always to feel that leave-taking ofhome and warmth, that riding away with hatred and danger awaiting one atthe end of the trip? Is there anything harder to understand--when havemen done anything madder--than this: to race through the night at sixtymiles an hour, to run away from all love, all security, to leave thetrain and take another train because it is the only one that goes towhere invisible machines belch red-hot pieces, of iron and Death castsout a finely meshed net of steel and lead to capture men? Who willobliterate from my soul the picture of that small dirty junction, theshivering, sleepy soldiers without any intoxication or music in theirblood, looking wistfully after the civilian's train and its brightlylighted windows as it disappeared behind the trees with a jolly blow ofits whistle? Who will obliterate the picture of that exchanging forDeath in the drab light of early dawn?

And supposing I could cross out that first endless night as somethingsettled and done with, would not the next morning remain, when our trainstopped at a switch in the middle of a wide, dewy meadow, and we weretold that we had to wait to let hospital trains go by? How shall I everbanish the memory of those thick exhalations of lysol and blood blownupon the happy fields from a dragon's nostrils? Won't I forever seethose endless serpents creeping up so indolently, as though surfeitedwith mangled human flesh? From hundreds of windows white bandagesgleamed and dull, glassy eyes stared out. Lying, crouching, on top ofeach other, body to body, they even hung on to the running-boards likebloody bunches of grapes, an overflowing abundance of distress andagony. And those wretched remains of strength and youth, those bruisedand battered men, looked with pity, yes, _with pity_, at our train. Am I really sick because those glances of warm compassion from bleedingcripples to sound, strapping young fellows burn in my soul with a firenever to be extinguished? An apprehension sent a chill through our wholetrain, the foreboding of a hell that one would rather run away fromwrapped in bloody bandages than go to meet whole and strong. And whenthis shudder of apprehension has turned into reality, into experienceand memory, is it to be shaken off as long as such trains still meetevery day? A casual remark about the transfer of troops, news of freshbattles inevitably recall this first actual contact with the war, justas a certain note when struck will produce a certain tone, and I see thetracks and ties and stones spattered with blood, shining in the earlymorning light of a summer day--signposts pointing to the front. 

"The Front!"

Am _I_ really the sick person because I cannot utter that word orwrite it down without my tongue growing coated from the intense hatred Ifeel? Axe not the others mad who look upon this wholesale cripple-and-corpse-factory with a mixture of religious devotion, romantic longingand shy sympathy? Would it not be wiser once for a change to examinethose others for the state of their mind? Must _I_ disclose it tomy wise physicians, who watch over me so compassionately, that all thismischief is the work of a few words that have been let loose uponhumanity like a pack of mad dogs?

Front--Enemy--Hero's death--Victory--the curs rage through the worldwith frothing mouth and rolling eyes. Millions who have been carefullyinoculated against smallpox, cholera and typhoid fever are chased intomadness. Millions, on either side, are packed into cars--ride, singing, to meet each other at the front--hack, stab, shoot at each other, bloweach other into bits, give their flesh and their bones for the bloodyhash out of which the dish of peace is to be cooked for those fortunateones who give the flesh of their calves and oxen to their fatherland fora hundred per cent profit, instead of carrying their own flesh to marketfor fifty cents a day. 

Suppose the word "war" had never been invented and had never beenhallowed through the ages and decked with gay trappings. Who would dareto supplement the deficient phrase, "declaration of war, " by thefollowing speech?

"After long, fruitless negotiations our emissary to the government of Xleft to-day. From the window of his parlor car he raised his silk hat tothe gentlemen who had escorted him to the station, and he will not meetthem with a friendly smile again until _you_ have made corpses ofmany hundreds of thousands of men in the country of X. Up then! Squeezeyourself into box-cars meant for six horses or twenty-eight men! Ride tomeet them, those other men. Knock them dead, hack off their heads, livelike wild beasts in damp excavations, in neglect, in filth, overrun withlice, until we shall deem the time has come again for our emissary totake a seat in a parlor car and lift his silk hat, and in ornate roomspolitely and aristocratically dispute over the advantages which our bigmerchants and manufacturers are to derive from the slaughter. Then asmany of you as are not rotting under the ground or hobbling on crutchesand begging from door to door may return to your half-starved families, and may--nay must!--take up your work again with redoubled energy, moreindefatigably and yet with fewer demands than before, so as to be ableto pay in sweat and privation for the shoes that you wore out inhundreds of marches and the clothes that decayed on your bodies. "

A fool he who would sue for a following in such terms! But _no_fools they who are the victims, who freeze, starve, kill, and letthemselves be killed, just because they have learned to believe thatthis must be so, once the mad dog War has burst his chains and bittenthe world. 

Is this what the wars were like from which the word "war" has come downto us? Did not war use to guarantee booty? Were not the mercenaries ledon by hopes of a gay, lawless life--women and ducats and gold-caparisoned steeds? Is this cowering under iron discipline, this holdingout of your head to be chopped off, this passive play with monsters thatspill their hellish cauldron on you from out of the blue distance still"war"? War was the collision of the superfluous forces, the ruffians ofall nations. Youth, for whom the town had grown too small and thedoublet too tight, ventured out, intoxicated by the play of its ownmuscles. And now shall the same word hold good when men already anchoredto house and home are torn away and whipped into the ranks and laid outbefore the enemy, and made to wait, defenseless, in dull resignation, like supers in this duel of the munition industries?

Is it right to misuse the word "war" as a standard when it is notcourage and strength that count, but explosive bombs and the length ofrange of the guns and the speed with which women and children turn outshells? We used to speak with horror of the tyrants of dark ages, whothrew helpless men and women to the lions and tigers; but now is thereone of us who would not mention them with respect in comparison with therulers who are at present directing the struggle between men andmachines, as though it were a puppet show at the end of telegraph wires, and who are animated by the delightful hope that our supply of humanflesh may outlast the enemy's supply of steel and iron?

No! All words coined before this carnage began are too beautiful and toohonest, like the word "front, " which I have learned to abhor. Are you"facing" the enemy when their artillery is hidden behind mountains andsends death over a distance of a day's journey, and when their sapperscome creeping up thirty feet below the surface? And your "front" is aterminal station, a little house all shot up, behind which the trackshave been torn up because the trains turn back here after unloadingtheir cargo of fresh, sunburned men, to call for them again when theyhave emerged from the machines with torn limbs and faces covered withverdigris. 

It was towards evening when I got off the train at this terminal. Abearded soldier with his right arm in a sling was sitting on the groundleaning against the iron railing around the platform. When he saw mepass by, quite spick and span, he stroked his right arm tenderly withhis left hand and threw me an ugly look of hatred and called out throughclenched teeth:

"Yes, Lieutenant, here's the place for man salad. "

Am I to forget the wicked grin that widened his mouth, already distortedby pain? Am I sick because each time I hear the word "front" an echo, "man salad, " inevitably croaks in my ears? Or are the others sick who donot hear "man salad, " but swallow down the cowardly stuff written by ourwar bards, who try like industrious salesmen to make the brand "worldwar" famous, because in reward they will have the privilege of dashingabout in automobiles like commanding generals instead of being forced toface death in muddy ditches and be bossed by a little corporal?

Are there really human beings of flesh and blood who can still take anewspaper in their hands and not foam at the mouth with rage? Can onecarry in one's brain the picture of wounded men lying exposed on slimyfields in the pouring rain, slowly, dumbly bleeding to death, and yetquietly read the vile stuff written about "perfect hospital service, ""smoothly running ambulances, " and "elegantly papered trenches, " withwhich these fellows poetize themselves free from military service?

Men come home with motionless, astonished eyes, still reflecting death. They walk about shyly, like somnambulists in brightly lighted streets. In their ears there still resound the bestial howls of fury that theythemselves bellowed into the hurricane of the drumfire so as to keepfrom bursting from inner stress. They come loaded down, like beasts ofburden, with horrors, the astonished looks of bayoneted, dying foes ontheir conscience--and they don't dare open their mouths becauseeverybody, wife and child included, grinds out the same tune, a flow ofcurious questions about shells, gas bombs and bayonet attacks. So thedays of the furlough expire, one by one, and the return to death isalmost a deliverance from the shame of being a coward in disguise amongthe friends at home, to whom dying and killing have become merecommonplaces. 

So be it, my dear doctors! It is an honor to be charged with madness ifthose villains are not called mad who, to save their own necks, have sogloriously hardened the people's hearts and abolished pity and implantedpride in the enemy's suffering, instead of acting as the oneintermediary between distress and power and arousing the conscience ofthe world by going to the most frequented places and shouting _"ManSal-ad"_ through a megaphone so loud and so long that at length allthose whose fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, have gone to the corpse-factory will be seized with terror and all the throats in the world willbe _one_ echo to "Man Sal-ad!"

If you were here right now, dear doctors, I could show you my comrade, summoned to this room in the very body by the flames of hate againstnews from the front and against the indifference of the hinterland. Ifeel him standing behind my back, but his face is lying on the whitesheet in front of me, like a faint water-mark, and my pen racesfrantically so as to cover his eyes at least with letters and hide theirreproachful stare. 

Large, widening, hideously distorted, his face, slowly swelling, risesfrom the paper like the face of Jesus of the handkerchief. 

It was just like this that the three war correspondents saw him lying atthe edge of the woods on that midsummer morning and--turned awayinvoluntarily with almost the military exactness of soldiers at a "rightabout face. " Their visit was meant for _me_! I was to furnish themwith carriage and horses because the automobile that was to have dartedthem through the danger zone was lying on the road to Goerz with abroken axle. 

Charming gentlemen, in wonderfully well-cut breeches and traveling caps, looking as if they had stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes motion picture. They offered to carry letters back and deliver messages, and they foundeverything on my place perfectly fascinating, and laughed heartily at mymattress of willow twigs--and were particularly grateful when thecarriage stood ready to carry them off before the daily bombardment ofthe Italians began. 

On driving out of the woods they had to pass the wounded man again withthe hideously disfigured face. He was crouching on the meadow. But thistime they did not see him. As if at command they turned their heads theother way and with animated gestures viewed the damage done by an airraid the day before, as though they were already sitting over a table ina coffee-house. 

I lost my breath, as though I had run a long distance up-hill. The placewhere I stood suddenly seemed strange and altered. Was that the samepiece of woods into which shells had so often come crashing, which thehuge Caproni planes had circled about with wide-spread wings likevultures, shedding bombs, while our machine guns lashed the leaves witha hailstorm of shot? Was it out of _this_ piece of woods that threemen had just driven off, healthy, unscathed, gaily waving their caps?Where was the wall that held us others imprisoned under the crackingbranches? Was there not a door that opened only to let out pale, sunkencheeks, feverish eyes, or mangled limbs?

The carriage rolled lightly over the field, trampled down brown, and theone thing missing to make it the perfect picture of a pleasure trip wasthe brilliant red of a Baedeker. 

Those men were riding back home. 

To wife and child, perhaps?

A painful pulling and tugging, as though my eyes were caught to thecarriage wheels. Then my body rebounded--as if torn off--back intoemptiness, and--at that moment, just when my soul was as if ploughed upby the carriage and laid bare and defenseless by yearning--at thatmoment the experience sprang upon me--with one dreadful leap, one singlebite--incurable for the rest of my life. 

Unsuspecting, I crossed over to the wounded man upon whom the three hadso unceremoniously turned their backs, as though he did not also belongto the interesting museum of shell holes that they had come to inspect. He was cowering near the dirty ragged little Red Cross flag, with hishead between his knees, and did not hear me come up. Behind him lay thebrown spot which stood out from the green still left on the field like acircus ring. The wounded soldiers who gathered here every morning atdawn to be driven to the field hospital in the wagons that brought usammunition had rubbed this spot in like a favorite corner of a sofa. 

How many I had seen crouching there like that, for ten--often twelvehours, when the wagons had left too early, or had been overcrowded, or, after violent fighting, had stood waiting in line at the munitions depotbehind the lines. Happy fellows, some of them, with broken arms or legs, the war slang, "a thousand-dollar shot, " on their pale, yet laughinglips--enviously ogled by the men with slight wounds or the men sick withtyphoid fever, who would all gladly have sacrificed a thousand dollarsand a limb into the bargain for the same certainty of not having toreturn to the front again. How many I had seen rolling on the ground, biting into the earth in their agony--how many in the pouring rain, halfburied already in the mud, their bodies ripped open, groaning andwhimpering and outbellowing the storm. 

This man seemed to be only slightly hurt in the right leg. The blood hadoozed out on one spot through the hastily made bandage, so I offered himmy first-aid package, besides cognac and cigarettes. But he did notmove. It was not until I laid my hand on his shoulder that he raised hishead--and the face he showed me threw me back like a blow on the chest. 

His mouth and nose had come apart, and crept like a thick vine up hisright cheek--which was no longer a cheek. A chunk of bluish red fleshswelled up there, covered by skin stretched to bursting and shining frombeing drawn so tight. The whole right side of his face seemed more likean exotic fruit than a human countenance, while from the left side, fromout of grey twitching misery, a sad, frightened eye looked up at me. 

Violent terror slung itself round my neck like a lasso. 

What was it? Such a frightful thing as that even this field, thiswaiting-room to the Beyond, had never witnessed before. Even the awfulrecollection of another wounded man who had stood at this same spot afew days before, his hands looking as though they were modelingsomething, while in actuality they were carefully holding his ownentrails--even that hideous recollection faded before the sight of thisJanus head, all peace, all gentle humanity on one side; all war, alldistorted, puffed-up image of fiendish hatred on the other side. 

"Shrapnel?" I stammered timidly. 

The answer was confused. All I could get out of it was that a dumdumbullet had smashed his right shinbone. But what was that he keptmumbling about a hook each time his hand trembled up to his glowingcheek?

I could not understand him; for the thing he had gone through stillseethed in his veins so violently that he spoke as though it were justthen happening and I were witnessing it. His peasant's mind could notcomprehend that there were people who had not seen or heard of thetremendous misery of the last hours he had gone through. So it was moreby guess-work that I gradually pieced together his story from unfinishedsentences, coarse oaths, and groans. 

For a whole night, after a repulsed attack on the enemy's trench, he hadlain with a broken leg, unconscious, near our own wire entanglements. Atdawn they threw out the iron grappling hook for him, with which theypull over into the trench the corpses of friend and foe so as to be ableto bury them unceremoniously before the sun of Goerz has a chance to doits work. With this hook, dipped in hundreds of corpses, a dunce--"Goddamn him!"--had torn his cheek open before a more skilful hand caughthold of it and got him over safely. And now he asked humbly to be takenaway to the hospital quickly, because he was worried--about his leg andbeing a crippled beggar the rest of his life. 

I ran off as though mad dogs were at my heels, over rocks and roots, through the woods to the next detachment. In vain! In the whole woodsthere was not a single vehicle to be found. I had given up the last oneto those three war correspondents. 

Why had I not asked them to take the one wounded man lying on the fieldalong with them and leave him at the hospital that they would pass? Whyhad they themselves not thought of doing their human duty? Why?

I clenched my fists in impotent fury and caught myself reaching for myrevolver as though I could still shoot those gay sparks in theircarriage. 

Breathless, overheated from the long race, I tottered back, my kneestrembling the whole way. I felt utterly broken, as though I werecarrying on my shoulders a picture, weighing a ton, of men who for sportangle for human carrion. 

An odd choking and tickling came into my throat--a sensation I had notknown since childhood--when, back at my post again, I had to listen tothe low whimpering of the helpless man. 

He was no longer alone. In my absence a little band of slightly woundedmen had joined him. Peering between the tree trunks I saw them sittingin a circle on the field, while the man who had been hooked was hoppingabout holding on to his injured leg and tossing his head from oneshoulder to the other. 

Towards noon I sent my corporals in search of a vehicle, promising thema princely reward, while I ran to the field again with my whisky flask. 

He was no longer dancing about. He was kneeling in the center of thecircle of wounded men, his body bent over, rolling his head on theground as though it were a thing apart from himself. Suddenly he jumpedup with such a yell of fury that a frightened murmur came even from theline of wounded men, who had been sitting there indifferent, sunk intheir own suffering. 

That was no longer anything human. The man's skin could not stand anymore stretching and had burst. The broad splits ran apart like the linesof a compass and in the middle the raw flesh glowed and gushed out. 

And he yelled! He hammered with his fist on the enormous purplish lump, until he fell to his knees again moaning under the blows of his ownhand. 

It was dark already when--at last!--they came and carted him away. Andwhen the night slowly wove its web of mist in the woods and I laywrapped in a mound of blankets, the only one who was still awake in thethrong of black tree-trunks that moved closer together in the darkness--there he was back again, standing up stiff in the moonlight, histortured cheek, huge as a pumpkin, shining blue against the blackshadows of the trees. It glimmered like a will-o'-the-wisp, now here, now there. Night after night. It shone into every dream, so that Iforced my eyelids open with my fingers--until, after ten frightfulnights, my body broke down and was carried, a shrieking, convulsed heap, to the same hospital in which He had succumbed to blood-poisoning. 

And now I am a madman! You can read it, black on white, on the placardat the head of my bed. They pat me on the back soothingly, like a shyinghorse, when I flare up and ask to be let out of this place in which_the others_ should be shut up. 

But the others are free! From my window I can look over the garden wallinto the street, and see them hurrying along, raising their hats, shaking hands, and crowding in front of the latest bulletin. I see womenand girls, dressed coquettishly, tripping along with pride shining intheir eyes, beside men whom a cross on the breast brands as murderers. Isee widows in long black veils--still patient. I see lads with flowersstuck in their helmets ready to leave for the war. And not one of themrebels! Not one of them sees bruised, mangled men cowering in darkcorners, men ripped apart by grappling hooks, men with their entrailsgushing out, and men with blue shining cheeks. 

They go by under my window, gesticulating, enthusiastic; because theenthusiastic phrases arrive coined fresh every day from the mint, andeach person feels sheltered and enveloped in a warmth of assent if thephrases ring clear from his lips. I know that they keep quiet even whenthey would like to speak, to cry out, to scream. I know that they huntdown "slackers, " and have no word of abuse for those who are a thousandtimes worse cowards, those who clearly recognise the utter senselessnessof this butchery of millions, yet will not open their mouths for fear ofthe censure of the thoughtless crowd. 

From my window I can see the whole globe spinning round like a crazywhirligig, whipped on by haughty lords in cunning calculation and byvenal servants in sneaking submissiveness. 

I see the whole pack! The bawlers who are too empty and too lazy todevelop their own selves and want to puff themselves with the glitteringpraise meant for their herd. The scoundrels who are protected by themasses, carried by them and fed by them, and who look up sanctimoniouslyto a bogy of their own invention, and hammer that bogy into theconscience of millions of good men, until the mass has been forged thathas neither heart nor brain, but only fury and blind faith. I see thewhole game proceeding madly in blood and agony. I see the spectatorsgoing by indifferently, and I am called a madman when I raise the windowto call down to them that the sons they have born and bred, the men theyhave loved are being chased like wild animals, are being butchered likecattle. 

Those fools down there, who for the sake of respectable condolencecalls, for a neighbor's eyes raised heavenward in sympathy, sacrificedthe splendor and warmth of their lives, who threw their flesh and bloodinto the barbed wire entanglements, to rot as carrion on the fields orbe hooked in with grappling hooks, who have no other consolation thanthat the "enemy" have had the same done to them--those fools remainfree; and in their despicable vanity and wicked patience they may dailyshove fresh hecatombs out to the cannons. But I must stay here impotent--left alone with the relentless comrade that my conscience gives birthto over again every day. 

I stand at my window and between me and the street lie piled high thebodies of the many I saw bleeding. And I stand here powerless--becausethe revolver that was given me to shoot down poor homesick devils, forced into a uniform by iron necessity, has been taken from me, out offear that I might dislodge a few mass murderers from their security andsend them as a warning example down to their victims. 

So I must stay here, as a seer over the blind--behind iron gratings. Andall I can do is consign these leaves to the wind--every day write it alldown again and keep scattering the pages out on the street. 

I will write indefatigably. I will sow the whole world with my pages. Until the seed shall sprout in every heart, until every bedroom will beentered by a blue apparition--a dear dead one showing his wounds; and atlast, at last, the glorious song of the world's redemption will resoundunder my window, the wrathful cry shouted by a million throats:

"Man Sal-ad!"

V

A HERO'S DEATH

The staff physician had not understood. He shook his head, vexed, andlooked questioningly over the rims of his glasses at his assistant. 

But his assistant had not understood either, and was embarrassed, andstood stiffly without saying anything. 

The only one who seemed to have any clue at all to the man's ravings washis orderly. For two tears glistened on the upturned ends of his waxedmustache. But the orderly spoke nothing but Hungarian, and the staffphysician turned away with a muttered "blooming idiot". Followed by hisflaxen-haired assistant, he made his way toward the operating room, panting and perspiring. 

The huge ball of cotton, inside of which, according to the placardhanging at the top of the bed, was hidden the head of First Lieutenantof the Reserves, Otto Kadar, of the ----th Regiment of Field Artillery, sank back on the pillow, and Miska seated himself again on his knapsack, snuffed up his tears, put his head between his big unwashed hands, andspeculated despairingly about his future. 

For it was plain that his Lieutenant could not last much longer. Miskaknew what was hidden in the huge cotton ball. He had seen the crushedskull and the horrible grey mess under the bloody splinters which werethe brains of his poor Lieutenant, who had been such a good man and kindsuperior. Miska could not hope for such wonderful luck a second time. You didn't come across such a kind-hearted master twice in your life. The many, many slices of salami that the Lieutenant always had given himfrom his own store of provisions, the gentle, cordial words that Miskahad heard him whisper to every wounded man--all the memories of thelong, bloody months he had gone through dully beside his master almostlike a comrade, rose to his mind. He felt dreadfully sorry for himself, the good fellow did, in his infinite defenselessness against the hugewar machine into which he would now be thrown again without the suresupport of his kind Lieutenant next to him. 

His broad peasant's head between his hands, he crouched like a dog atthe feet of his dying master, and the tears rolled gently down hischeeks and stuck one by one on the ends of his mustache glued with dustand pomade. 

It was not quite clear to Miska either just why the poor Lieutenant keptclamoring so frightfully for his talking-machine. All he knew was thatthe officers had been sitting under cover, listening to the RakoczyMarch on the phonograph, when suddenly that accursed shell burst uponthem and everything disappeared in smoke and earth. He himself had beenknocked unconscious by a heavy board which came out of a clear sky andhit him on the back. He had fallen flat and it was an eternity before hegot his breath back again. 

Then--then--Miska's recollections of things after this were a bit hazy--then he remembered an indescribable heap of splintered boards and fallenbeams, a hash of rags, cement, earth, human limbs, and quantities ofblood. And then--then he remembered--young Meltzar. Meltzar was stillsitting upright with his back against the remains of the wall, and therecord that had just played the Rakoczy March and had miraculouslyremained whole was perched on the place where his head belonged. But hishead was not there. It was gone--completely gone, while the black recordremained, also leaning against the wall, directly on top of thebloodsoaked collar. It was awful. Not one of the soldiers had daredtouch the upright body with the record exactly like a head on its neck. 

Brrr! A cold shiver ran down Miska's back at the recollection, and hisheart stopped beating in fright when just at that moment the Lieutenantagain began to scream:

"Phonograph! Only a phonograph!"

Miska jumped up and saw the huge ball of cotton lift itself with aneffort from the pillow, and his officer's one remaining eye fix greedilyupon some invisible object. He stood there ashamed, as though guilty ofa crime, when indignant glances were darted at him from the other bedsin the ward. 

"This is unbearable!" cried a Major, who had been severely wounded, fromthe other end of the long ward. "Carry the man out. "

But the Major spoke German, and Miska was more than ever at sea. Hewiped the sweat of anguish from his brow and explained to a lieutenantin the next bed, since his master could not hear what he said anyhow, that the phonograph had been broken--broken into a thousand pieces, elsehe would never have left it there, but would surely have brought italong as he had brought everything else belonging to his Lieutenant thathe had managed to find. 

No one answered him. As at a word of command, each one of the officersthe whole length of the ward stuck his head under his pillow and pulledthe covers over his ears so as not to hear that horrible gurgling laughwhich changed into a howl or into infuriated cries for the phonograph. The old Major even wrapped his blood-stained cloak around his head likea turban. 

"Lieutenant! I beg pardon, Lieutenant----" Miska begged, and very, verygently stroked his master's quivering knees with his big hard palms. 

But Lieutenant Kadar heard him not. Neither did he feel the heavy handresting on his knees. For, opposite him, young Meltzar was still sittingwith a flat, black, round head on his neck on which the Rakoczy Marchwas ingraved in spirals. And all at once the officer realized that forthe past six months he had done poor Meltzar a grievous injustice. Howcould the poor fellow help his stupidity, how could he help his silly, high-flown patriotic talk? How could he possibly have had sensible ideaswith a record for a head? Poor Meltzar!

Lieutenant Kadar simply could not understand why it was that six monthsbefore, right away, when young Meltzar announced his entrance into thebattery, he had not guessed what they had done to the boy in thehinterland. 

They had given him a different head. They had unscrewed the handsomefair young head of a lad of eighteen and in its place put a black, scratched-up disc, which could do nothing but squeak the Rakoczy March. That had now been proved! How the boy must have suffered whenever hissuperior officer, his senior by twenty years, inflicted long sermons onhim about humanity! With the flat, round disc that they had put on himhe of course could not comprehend that the Italian soldiers being ledpast the battery, reeking with blood and in rags, would also much ratherhave stayed at home, if a bulletin on the street corner had not forcedthem to leave their homes immediately, just as the mobilization inHungary had forced the Hungarian gunners to leave their homes. 

Now for the first time Lieutenant Kadar comprehended the young man'sunbending resistance to him. Now at last he realized why this boy, whocould have been his son, had so completely ignored his wisest, kindestadmonitions and explanations, and had always responded by whistling theRakoczy March through clenched teeth and hissing the stereotypedfulmination, "The dogs ought to be shot to pieces. "

So then it was not because of his being young and stupid that Meltzarhad behaved as he did; not because he had come direct from the militaryacademy to the trenches. The phonograph record was to blame, thephonograph record!

Lieutenant Kadar felt his veins swell up like ropes and his blood poundon his temples like blows on an anvil, so great was his wrath againstthe wrongdoers who had treacherously unscrewed poor Meltzar's lovelyyoung head from his body. 

And--this was the most gruesome--as he now thought of his subordinatesand fellow-officers, he saw them all going about exactly like poorMeltzar, without heads on their bodies. He shut his eyes and tried torecall the looks of his gunners--in vain! Not a single face rose beforehis mind's eye. He had spent months and months among those men and hadnot discovered until that moment that not one of them had a head on hisshoulders. Otherwise he would surely have remembered whether his gunnerhad a mustache or not and whether the artillery captain was light ordark. No! Nothing stuck in his mind--nothing but phonograph records, hideous, black, round plates lying on bloody blouses. 

The whole region of the Isonzo suddenly lay spread out way below himlike a huge map such as he had often seen in illustrated papers. Thesilver ribbon of the river wound in and out among hills and coppices, and Lieutenant Kadar soared high above the welter down below withoutmotor or aeroplane, but borne along merely by his own outspread arms. And everywhere he looked, on every hill and in every hollow, he saw thehorns of innumerable talking-machines growing out of the ground. Thousands upon thousands of those familiar cornucopias of bright lacquerwith gilt edges pointed their open mouths up at him. And each one wasthe center of a swarming ant-hill of busy gunners carrying shot andshell. 

And now Lieutenant Kadar saw it very distinctly: all the men had recordson their necks like young Meltzar. Not a single one carried his ownhead. But when the shells burst with a howl from the lacquered horns andflew straight into an ant-hill, then the flat, black discs broke apartand at the very same instant changed back into real heads. From hisheight Lieutenant Kadar saw the brains gush out of the shattered discsand the evenly-marked surfaces turn on the second into ashen, agonizedhuman countenances. 

Everything seemed to be revealed now in one stroke to the dyinglieutenant--all the secrets of the war, all the problems he had broodedover for many months past. So he had the key to the riddle. These peopleevidently did not get their heads back until they were about to die. Somewhere--somewhere--far back--far back of the lines, their heads hadbeen unscrewed and replaced by records that could do nothing but playthe Rakoczy March. Prepared in this fashion, they had been jammed intothe trains and sent to the front, like poor Meltzar, like himself, likeall of them. 

In a fury of anger, the ball of cotton tossed itself up again with ajerk. Lieutenant Kadar wanted to jump out of bed and reveal the secretto his men, and urge them to insist upon having their heads back again. He wanted to whisper the secret to each individual along the entirefront, from Plava all the way down to the sea. He wanted to tell it toeach gunner, each soldier in the infantry and even to the Italians overthere! He even wanted to tell it to the Italians. The Italians, too, hadhad records screwed on to their necks. And they should go back home, too, back to Verona, to Venice, to Naples, where their heads lay piledup in the store-houses for safekeeping until the war was over. Lieutenant Kadar wanted to run from one man to another, so as to helpeach individual to recover his head, whether friend or foe. 

But all at once he noticed he could not walk. And he wasn't soaring anymore either. Heavy iron weights clamped his feet down to the bed to keephim from revealing the great secret. 

Well, then, he would shout it out in a roar, in a voice supernaturallyloud that would sound above the bursting of the shells and the blare oftrumpets on the Day of Judgment, and proclaim the truth from Plava toTrieste, even into the Tyrol. He would shout as no man had ever shoutedbefore:

"Phonograph!--Bring the heads!--Phonograph!--"

Here his voice suddenly broke with a gurgling sound of agony right inthe midst of his message of salvation. It hurt too much. He could notshout. He felt as though at each word a sharp needle went deep into hisbrain. 

A needle?

Of course! How could he have forgotten it? His head had been screwedoff, too. He wore a record on his neck, too, like all the others. Whenhe tried to say something, the needle stuck itself into his skull andran mercilessly along all the coils of his brain. 

No! He could not bear it! He'd rather keep quiet--keep the secret tohimself. Only not to feel that pain--that maddening pain in his head!

But the machine ran on. Lieutenant Kadar grabbed his head with bothhands and dug his nails deep into his temples. If he didn't stop thatthing in time from going round and round, then his revolving head wouldcertainly break his neck in a few seconds. 

Icy drops of anguish flowed from all his pores. "Miska!" he yelled inthe extreme of his distress. 

But Miska did not know what to do. 

The record kept on revolving and joyously thrummed the Rakoczy March. All the sinews in the Lieutenant's body grew tense. Again and again hefelt his head slip from between his hands--his spine was already risingbefore his eyes! With a last, frantic effort he tried once more to gethis hands inside the bandages and press his head forward. Then one moredreadful gnashing of his teeth and one more horrible groan and--the longward was at length as silent as an empty church. 

When the flaxen-haired assistant returned from the operating-roomMiska's whining informed him from afar that another cot in the officers'division was now vacant. The impatient old Major quite needlesslybeckoned him to his side and announced in a loud voice so that all thegentlemen could hear:

"The poor devil there has at last come to the end of his sufferings. "Then he added in a voice vibrating with respect: "He died like a trueHungarian--singing the Rakoczy March. "

VI

HOME AGAIN

At last the lake gleamed through the leaves, and the familiar grey chalkmountains emerged into view, reaching out across the railroad embankmentas with threatening fingers deep down into the water. There, beyond thesmoky black opening of the short tunnel, the church steeple and a cornerof the castle peeped for an instant above the grove. 

John Bogdán leaned way out of the train window and looked at everythingwith greedy eyes, like a man going over the inventory of hispossessions, all tense and distrustful, for fear something may have beenlost in his absence. As each group of trees for which he waited dartedby, he gave a satisfied nod, measuring the correctness of the landscapeby the picture of it that he carried fairly seared in his memory. Everything agreed. Every milestone on the highroad, now running parallelto the railroad tracks, stood on the right spot. There! The flash of theflaming red copper beech, at which the horses always shied and once camewithin an ace of upsetting the carriage. 

John Bogdán drew a deep, heavy sigh, fished a small mirror out of hispocket, and gave his face a final scrutiny before leaving the train. Ateach station his face seemed to grow uglier. The right side was not sobad. A bit of his mustache still remained, and his right cheek wasfairly smooth except for the gash at the corner of his mouth, which hadnot healed properly. But the left side! He had let those damned cityfolk tell him a whole lot of nonsense about the left side of his face. Abunch of damned scoundrels they were, bent upon making fools of poorpeasants, in wartime just the same as in peacetime--all of them, thegreat doctor as well as the fine ladies in their dazzling white gownsand with their silly affected talk. Heaven knows it was no great trickto bamboozle a simple coachman, who had managed with only the greatestpains to learn a bit of reading and writing. They had smiled andsimpered at him and were so nice and had promised him such a paradise. And now, here he was helpless, left all alone to himself, a lost man. 

With a furious curse, he tore off his hat and threw it on the seat. 

Was that the face of a human being? Was it permitted to do such a thingto a man? His nose looked like a patchwork of small dice of differentcolors. His mouth was awry, and the whole left cheek was like a piece ofbloated raw meat, red and criss-crossed with deep scars. Ugh! How ugly!A fright! And besides, instead of a cheekbone, he had a long hollow, deep enough to hold a man's finger. And it was for this he had lethimself be tortured so? For this he had let himself be enticed seventeentimes, like a patient sheep, into that confounded room with the glasswalls and the shining instruments? A shudder ran down his back at therecollection of the tortures he had gone through with clenched teeth, just to look like a human being again and be able to go back home to hisbride. 

And now he _was_ home. 

The train pulled out of the tunnel, the whistle blew, and the dwarfacacias in front of the station-master's hut sent a greeting through thewindow. Grimly John Bogdán dragged his heavy bag through the traincorridor, descended the steps hesitatingly, and stood there at a loss, looking around for help as the train rolled on behind his back. 

He took out his large flowered handkerchief and wiped off the heavybeads of perspiration from his forehead. What was he to do now? Why hadhe come here at all? Now that he had finally set foot again on the homesoil for which he had yearned so ardently, a great longing came over himfor the hospital, which he had left that very morning, only a few hoursbefore, full of rejoicing. He thought of the long ward with all thosemen wrapped in bandages who limped and hobbled, lame, blind ordisfigured. There nobody was revolted by the sight of his mutilatedface, no indeed. On the contrary, most of them envied him. He was atleast capable of going back to work, his arms and legs were sound, andhis right eye was perfect. Many would have been ready to exchange placeswith him. Some had begrudged him his lot and said it was wrong for thegovernment to have granted him a pension on account of losing his lefteye. One eye and a face a little scratched up--what was that comparedwith a wooden leg, a crippled arm, or a perforated lung, which wheezedand rattled like a poor machine at the slightest exertion?

Among the many cripples in the hospital John Bogdán was looked upon as alucky devil, a celebrity. Everybody knew his story. The visitors to thehospital wanted first of all to see the man who had had himself operatedon seventeen times and the skin cut away in bands from his back, hischest, and his thighs. After each operation, as soon as the bandageswere removed, the door to his ward never remained shut, a hundredopinions were pronounced, and every newcomer was given a detaileddescription of how terrible his face had been before. The few men whohad shared Bogdán's room with him from the start described the formerawfulness of his face with a sort of pride, as though they had takenpart in the successful operations. 

Thus John Bogdán had gradually become almost vain of his shockingmutilation and the progress of the beautifying process. And when he leftthe hospital, it was with the expectation of being admired as asensation in his village. 

And now?

Alone in the world, with no relatives to go to, with nothing but hisknapsack and his little trunk, the brilliant sunlight of the Hungarianplain country flooding down on him, and the village stretching away to adistance before him, John Bogdán suddenly felt himself a prey totimidity, to a terror that he had not known amid the bursting of theshells, the most violent charges, the most ferocious hand-to-handencounters. His inert peasant intellect, his nature crudely compoundedof wilfulness and vanity, had always been a stranger to deep-goingreflections. Yet an instinctive misgiving, the sense of distrust andhostility that overwhelmed him, told him plainly enough that he wasabout to face disillusionment and mortification such as he had notdreamed of in the hospital. 

He lifted his luggage to his back dejectedly and walked toward the exitwith hesitating steps. There, in the shadow of the dusty acacias that hehad seen grow up and that had seen him grow up, he felt himselfconfronted with his former self, with the handsome John Bogdán who wasknown in the village as the smart coachman of the manor. A lot of goodwere all the operations and patchwork now. The thing now was the painfulcontrast between the high-spirited, forward lad, who on this spot hadsung out a last hoarse farewell to his sweetheart, Marcsa, on the firstday of mobilization, and the disfigured creature who was standing infront of the same railroad station with one eye gone, a shatteredcheekbone, a patched-up cheek, and half a nose, embittered and castdown, as if it were only that morning that he had met with themisfortune. 

At the small grille gate stood the wife of the station-guard, Kovacs--since the beginning of the war Kovacs himself had been somewhere on theRussian front--talking and holding the ticket-puncher, impatientlywaiting for the last passenger to pass through. John Bogdán saw her, andhis heart began to beat so violently that he involuntarily lingered ateach step. Would she recognize him, or would she not? His knee jointsgave way as if they had suddenly decayed, and his hand trembled as heheld out the ticket. 

She took the ticket and let him pass through--without a word!

Poor John Bogdán's breath stopped short. 

But he pulled himself together with all his might, looked her firmly inthe face with his one eye and said, with a painful effort to steady hisvoice:

"How do you do?"

"How do you do?" the woman rejoined. He encountered her eyes, saw themwiden into a stare, saw them grope over his mangled face, and thenquickly turn in another direction, as if she could not bear the sight. He wanted to stop, but he noticed her lips quiver and heard a murmured"Jesus, son of Mary, " as if he were the devil incarnate. And he totteredon, deeply wounded. 

"She did not recognize me!" the blood hammered in his ears. "She did notrecognize me--did not recognize me!" He dragged himself to the benchopposite the station, threw his luggage to the ground and sank down onthe seat. 

She did not recognize him! The wife of Kovacs, the station-guard, didnot recognize John Bogdán. The house of her parents stood next to thehouse of his parents. She and he had gone to school together, they hadbeen confirmed together. He had held her in his arms and kissed andkissed her, heaven knows how many times, before Kovacs came to thevillage to woo her. And _she_ had not recognized him! Not even byhis voice, so great was the change. 

He glanced over at her again involuntarily, and saw her talking eagerlywith the station-master. From her gestures, he guessed she was tellingof the horrible sight she had just seen, the stranger soldier sohideously disfigured. He uttered a short croaking sound, an abortivecurse, and then his head fell on his chest, and he sobbed like adeserted woman. 

What was he to do? Go up to the castle, open the door to the servants'quarters, and call out a saucy "Hello, Marcsa" to the astonished girl?

That was the way he had always thought of it. The devil knows how oftenhe had painted the picture to the dot--the maids' screaming, Marcsa'scry of delight, her flinging her arms about his neck, and the thousandquestions that would come pouring down on him, while he would sit therewith Marcsa on his knees, and now and then throw out a casual reply tohis awed, attentive listeners. 

But now--how about it now? Go to Marcsa? He? With that face, the facethat had made Julia, the station-guard's wife, cross herself in fright?Wasn't Marcsa famed throughout the county for her sharp tongue andhaughty ways? She had snubbed the men by the score, laughed at them, made fools of them all, until she finally fell in love with him. 

John Bogdán thrust his fist into his mouth and dug his teeth into theflesh, until the pain of it at length helped him subdue his sobbing. Then he buried his head in his hands and tried to think. 

Never in his life had anything gone amiss with him. He had always beenliked, at school, in the castle, and even in the barracks. He had gonethrough life whistling contentedly, a good-looking alert lad, anexcellent jockey, and a coachman who drove with style and loved hishorses, as his horses loved him. When he deigned to toss a kiss to thewomen as he dashed by, he was accustomed to see a flattered smile cometo their faces. Only with Marcsa did it take a little longer. But shewas famous for her beauty far and wide. Even John's master, the lord ofthe castle, had patted him on the shoulder almost enviously when Marcsaand he had become engaged. 

"A handsome couple, " the pastor had said. 

John Bogdán groped again for the little mirror in his pocket and thensat with drooping body, oppressed by a profound melancholy. That thingin the glass was to be the bridegroom of the beautiful Marcsa? What didthat ape's face, that piece of patchwork, that checkerboard which thedamned quack, the impostor, whom they called a distinguished medicalauthority, a celebrated doctor, had basted together--what did it have todo with _that_ John Bogdán whom Marcsa had promised to marry andwhom she had accompanied to the station crying when he had gone off tothe war? For Marcsa there was only _one_ John Bogdán, the one thatwas coachman to the lord of the castle and the handsomest man in thevillage. Was he still coachman? The lord would take care not to disgracehis magnificent pair with such a scarecrow or drive to the county seatwith such a monstrosity on the box. Haying--that's what they would puthim to--cleaning out the dung from the stables. And Marcsa, thebeautiful Marcsa whom all the men were vying for, would she be the wifeof a miserable day laborer?

No, of this John Bogdán was certain, the man sitting on the bench therewas no longer John Bogdán to Marcsa. She would not have him now--no morethan the lord would have him on the coachman's box. A cripple is acripple, and Marcsa had engaged herself to John Bogdán, not to thefright that he was bringing back home to her. 

His melancholy gradually gave way to an ungovernable fury against thosepeople in the city who had given him all that buncombe and talked himinto heaven knows what. Marcsa should be proud because he had beendisfigured in the service of his fatherland. Proud? Ha-ha!

He laughed scornfully, and his fingers tightened convulsively about thecursed mirror, until the glass broke into bits and cut his hand. Theblood trickled slowly down his sleeves without his noticing it, so greatwas his rage against that bunch of aristocratic ladies in the hospitalwhose twaddle had deprived him of his reason. They probably thought thata man with one eye and half a nose was good enough for a peasant girl?Fatherland? Would Marcsa go to the altar with the fatherland? Could sheshow off the fatherland to the women when she would see them looking ather pityingly? Did the fatherland drive through the village with ribbonsflying from its hat? Ridiculous! Sitting on the bench opposite thestation, with the sign of the village in view, a short name, a singleword, which comprised his whole life, all his memories, hopes andexperiences, John Bogdán suddenly thought of one of the villagecharacters, Peter the cripple, who had lived in the tumbledown hutbehind the mill many years before, when John was still a child. John sawhim quite distinctly, standing there with his noisy wooden leg and hissad, starved, emaciated face. He, too, had sacrificed a part of himself, his leg, "for the fatherland, " in Bosnia during the occupation; and thenhe had had to live in the old hovel all alone, made fun of by thechildren, who imitated his walk, and grumblingly tolerated by thepeasants, who resented the imposition of this burden upon the community. "In the service of the fatherland. " Never had the "fatherland" beenmentioned when Peter the cripple went by. They called him contemptuouslythe village pauper, and that was all there was to it. 

John Bogdán gnashed his teeth in a rage that he had not thought of Peterthe cripple in the hospital. Then he would have given those city peoplea piece of his mind. He would have told them what he thought of theirsilly, prattling humbug about the fatherland and about the great honorit was to return home to Marcsa looking like a monkey. If he had thedoctor in his clutches now! The fakir had photographed him, not once, but a dozen times, from all sides, after each butchery, as though he hadaccomplished a miracle, had turned out a wonderful masterpiece. And hereJulia, even Julia, his playmate, his neighbor, had not recognized him. 

So deep was John Bogdán sunk in his misery, so engulfed in grim plans ofvengeance, that he did not notice a man who had been standing in frontof him for several minutes, eyeing him curiously from every angle. Suddenly a voice woke him up out of his brooding, and a hot wave surgedinto his face, and his heart stood still with delighted terror, as heheard some one say:

"Is that you, Bogdán?"

He raised himself, happy at having been recognized after all. But thenext moment he knitted his brows in complete disappointment. It wasMihály the humpback. 

There was no other man in the whole village, even in the whole county, whose hand John Bogdán would not at that moment have grasped cordiallyin a surge of gratitude. But this humpback--he never had wanted to haveanything to do with him, and now certainly not. The fellow might imaginehe had found a comrade, and was probably glad that he was no longer theonly disfigured person in the place. 

"Yes, it's I. Well?"

The humpback's small, piercing eyes searched Bogdán's scarred facecuriously, and he shook his head in pity. 

"Well, well, the Russians certainly have done you up. "

Bogdán snarled at him like a vicious cur. 

"It's none of your business. What right have you to talk? If I had comeinto the world like you, with my belly on my back, the Russians couldn'thave done anything to me. "

The humpback seated himself quietly beside John without showing theleast sign of being insulted. 

"The war hasn't made you any politer, I can see that, " he remarkeddrily. "You're not exactly in a happy frame of mind, which does notsurprise me. Yes, that's the way it is. The poor people must give uptheir sound flesh and bone so that the enemy should not deprive the richof their superfluity. You may bless your stars you came out of it aswell as you did. "

"I do, " Bogdán growled with a glance of hatred. "The shells don't ask ifyou are rich or poor. Counts and barons are lying out there, rotting inthe sun like dead beasts. Any man that God has not smitten in his cradleso that he's not fit to be either a man or a woman is out in thebattlefield now, whether he's as poor as a church mouse or used toeating from golden plates. "

The humpback cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders. 

"There are all sorts of people, " he observed, and was about to addsomething else, but bethought himself and remained silent. 

This Bogdán always had had the soul of a flunkey, proud of being allowedto serve the high and mighty and feeling solid with his oppressorsbecause he was allowed to contribute to their pomp in gold-laced liveryand silver buttons. His masters had sicked him on to face the cannons indefense of their own wealth, and now the man sat there disfigured, withonly one eye, and still would not permit any criticism of his graciousemployers. Against such stupidity there was nothing to be done. Therewas no use wasting a single word on him. 

The two remained sitting for a while in silence. Bogdán filled his pipecarefully and deliberately, and Mihály watched him with interest. 

"Are you going to the castle?" the humpback asked cautiously, when thepipe was at last lit. 

John Bogdán was well aware just what the hateful creature was aiming at. He knew him. A Socialist--that's what he was, one of those good-for-nothings who take the bread out of poor people's mouths by dinning a lotof nonsense into their ears, just like a mean dog who snaps at the handthat feeds him. He had made a good living as foreman in the brickyard, and as thanks he had incited all the workmen against the owner, Bogdán'smaster, until they demanded twice as much wages, and were ready to setfire to the castle on all four corners. Once Mihály had tried his luckwith him, too. He had wanted to make his master out a bad man. But thistime he had bucked up against the right person. A box on his right earand a box on his left ear, and then a good sound kick--that was theanswer to keep him from ever again trying to make a Socialist of JohnBogdán, one of those low fellows who know no God or fatherland. 

Mihály moved on the bench uneasily, every now and then scrutinizing hisneighbor from the side. At last he plucked up courage and said suddenly:

"They'll probably be glad up there that you are back. Your arms arestill whole, and they need people in the factory. "

Bogdán turned up his nose. 

"In the brickyard?" he asked disdainfully. 

The humpback burst out laughing. 

"Brickyard? Brickyard is good. Who needs bricks in war? The brickyard'sgone long ago, man. Do you see those trucks over there? They are allloaded up with shells. Every Saturday a whole train of shells leaveshere. "

Bogdán listened eagerly. That was news. A change on the estate of whichhe had not yet heard. 

"You see, there is such a nice division, " Mihály continued, smilingsarcastically. "One goes away and lets his head be blown off. The otherremains comfortably at home and manufactures shells and decorates hiscastle with thousand-dollar bills. Well, I'm satisfied. "

"What are we to do, eh, shoot with peas or with air? You can't carry ona war without shells. Shells are needed just as much as soldiers. "

"Exactly. And because the rich have the choice of being soldiers ormaking shells, they choose to make the shells and send _you_ off tohave your head blown off. What are you getting for your eye? Twenty-fivedollars a year? Or perhaps as much as fifty? And the others whom theravens are feeding on don't get even that out of the war. But thegentleman up in the castle is making his five hundred a day and doesn'trisk even his little finger doing it. I'd be a patriot on those termsmyself. I am telling you the truth. At first, of course, they said hewas going to war, and he did actually ride off in great state, but threeweeks later he was back here again with machines and all the equipment, and now he delivers fine orations in the townhouse and sends other menoff to die--and on top of it is gallant to the wives left behind. Hestuffs his pockets and fools with every girl in the factory. He's thecock of the whole district. "

Bogdán, his brows knit in annoyance, let the man talk on. But the lastpart struck him with a shock. He pricked up his ears and grew uneasy andfor a while struggled heroically against asking a question that burnedon his lips. But in the end he could not restrain himself and blurtedout:

"Is--is Marcsa working in the factory, too?"

The humpback's eyes flashed. 

"Marcsa, the beautiful Marcsa! I should say so! She's been made aforelady, though they say she's never had a shell in her hands, but, tomake up, the lord's hands have--"

With a short, hoarse growl John Bogdán flew at the humpback's throat, squeezed in his Adam's apple, pressing it into his neck, and held him ina merciless clutch. The man beat about with his arms, his eyes poppedfrom his head in fright, his throat gurgled, and his face turned livid. Then John Bogdán released his hold, and Mihály fell to the ground andlay there gasping. Bogdán quickly gathered up his things and strode off, taking long, quick steps, as if afraid of arriving too late forsomething in the castle. 

He gave not another look back at Mihály the humpback, never turnedaround once, but quietly went his way and for a long while felt the warmthroat in his hand. 

What was a man who lay gasping on the road to him? One man more or less. In the rhythmic regularity of the marching column, he had passed bythousands like him, and it had never occurred to his mind, dulled byweariness, that the grey spots thickly strewn over the fields, the heapslining the roadway like piles of dung in the spring, were human beingsstruck down by death. He and his comrades had waded in the dead, thereat Kielce, when they made a dash across the fields, and earthy greyhands rose out of every furrow pawing the air, and trousers drenched inblood and distorted faces grew out of the ground, as if all the deadwere scrambling from their graves for the Last Judgment. They hadstepped and stumbled over corpses. Once the fat little officer ofreserves, to the great amusement of his company, had gotten deathly sickat his stomach because he had inadvertently stepped on the chest of ahalf-decayed Russian, and the body had given way under him, and he hadscarcely been able to withdraw his foot from the foul hole. John Bogdánsmiled as he recalled the wicked jokes the men had cracked at theofficer's expense, how the officer had gone all white and leaned againsta tree and carried on like a man who has much more than quenched histhirst. 

The road glowed in the mid-day sun. The village clock struck twelve. From the hill yonder came, like an answer, the deep bellow of thefactory whistle, and a little white cloud rose over the tops of thetrees. Bogdán quickened his pace, running rather than walking, heedlessof the drops of sweat that ran down and tickled his neck. For almost ayear he had breathed nothing but the hospital atmosphere, had smellednothing but iodoform and lysol and seen nothing but roofs and walls. Hislungs drew in the aroma of the blossoming meadows with deepsatisfaction, and the soles of his boots tramped the ground sturdily, asif he were again marching in regular order. 

This was the first walk he had taken since he was wounded, the firstroad he had seen since those wild marches on Russian soil. At moments heseemed to hear the cannons roaring. The short struggle with the humpbackhad set his blood coursing, and his memories of the war, for a timestifled as it were beneath a layer of dust by the dreary monotony of thehospital life, suddenly came whirling back to him. 

He almost regretted having let that damned blackguard go so soon. Onemoment more, and he would never have opened his blasphemous mouth again. His head would have fallen back exhausted to one side, he would onceagain have embraced the air longingly with outspread fingers, and thenin a flash would have shrunk together, exactly like the fat, messyRussian with the large blue eyes who was the first man to presenthimself to St. Peter with a greeting from John Bogdán. Bogdán had notlet _him_ loose until he had altogether quit squirming. He hadchoked him dead as a doornail. And still he was a comical fellow, notnearly so disgusting as that rascally humpback. But he was the firstenemy soldier whom he had got into his grasp, his very first Russian. Amagnificent array of others had followed, though the fat man was theonly one Bogdán had choked to death. He had smashed scores with thebutt-end of his gun and run his bayonet through scores of others. He hadeven squashed with his boots the wretch who had struck down his dearestcomrade before his very eyes. But never again did he choke a man todeath. That was why the little fat fellow stuck in his memory. He had norecollection of the others whatever. All he saw now in his mind was atangle of greyish-green uniforms. And as he thought of his heroic deeds, the gnashing, the stamping, the gasping, and the cursing of the hand-to-hand encounters resounded in his ears. How many, he wondered, had hesent to the other world? God alone may have counted them. He himself hadhad enough to do trying to save his own skin. Had a man stopped to lookaround, he would have carried his curiosity to the next world. 

And yet--there was another face that remained fixed in his memory. Agreat big thin fellow, as tall as a beanpole, with enormous yellowtusks, which he gnashed like a boar. Yes, he had as clear a picture ofhim as if it had been yesterday. He saw him half-backed up against thewall already, swinging his gun over his head. One second more, and thebutt-end would have come whizzing down. But a sleepy Russian was neverthe man to get the better of John Bogdán. Before he had the chance tobring down his gun, Bogdán's bayonet was in between his ribs, and theRussian fell over on his own gun. The bayonet pierced him through andthrough, and even went into the wall behind him, and came mighty nearbreaking off. 

But the same thing never happened to Bogdán again. It had happened thatonce because he had thrust too hard, with clenched teeth, gripping therod in a tight clutch, as if it were iron that he had to cleave. Thefact was, he had not yet discovered that it really isn't so difficult tomow down a human being. He had been prepared for any amount ofresistance, and his bayonet had glided into the fellow's body likebutter. His mouth had remained wide open in astonishment--he recalled itto the dot. A man who has never tried a bayonet thrust thinks a humanbeing is made up all of bones, and he fetches out for a good hardstroke. Then he's in a pickle to free his weapon again before one of themessy-looking devils takes advantage of his defenselessness. The way todo was to go at it very lightly, with a short jerky thrust. Then theblade ran in of itself, like a good horse--you actually had troubleholding it back. The most important thing was, not to take your eye offyour enemy. You mustn't look at your bayonet, or the spot you intend topierce. You must always watch your enemy so as to guess his move intime. It's from your enemy's face that you must read the right momentfor stepping backward. They all behaved the same way--exactly like thefirst tall wild fellow who gnashed his tusks. All of a sudden theirfaces turned absolutely smooth, as if the cold iron in their body hadchilled their fury, their eyes opened wide in astonishment and looked attheir enemy as if to ask in reproach, "What are you doing?" Then theyusually clutched at the bayonet and needlessly cut their fingers, too, before they fell over dead. If you didn't know exactly what to do anddidn't hold your weapon back in time and withdraw it quickly from thewound, just when you saw the man's eyes growing large, you would becarried along down with him or would get hit on the head by the butt-endof another enemy's gun long before you could draw your bayonet out. 

These were all things that John Bogdán had often discussed with hiscomrades after severe frays when they criticized the men who had fallenfor behaving stupidly and who had had to pay with their lives for theirawkwardness. 

As he strode along in haste up the familiar road to the castle, he wasfairly lost in recollections. His legs moved of themselves, like horseson the homeward way. He passed through the open grille gateway and wasalready walking on the gravel path, his head bowed on his chest, withoutnoticing that he had reached home. 

The neighing of horses woke him up from his thoughts with a start. Hestood still, deeply stirred by the sight of the stables, only a few feetaway, and inside, in the twilight, the gleam of his favorite horse'sflanks. He was about to turn off the path and make for the stable doorwhen far away down below, at the other end of the large place, he saw awoman coming from the brickyard. She wore a dotted red silk kerchief onher head and carried her full figure proudly, and the challenging swayof her hips billowed her wide skirts as the wind billows a field of ripegrain. 

John Bogdán stood stockstill, as if some one had struck him on thechest. It was Marcsa! There was not another girl in the whole countrywho walked like that. He threw his luggage to the ground and dashed off. 

"Marcsa! Marcsa!" his cry thundered out over the broad courtyard. 

The girl turned and waited for his approach, peering curiously throughhalf-closed eyes. When almost face to face with her Bogdán stood still. 

"Marcsa!" he repeated in a whisper, his gaze fastened upon her faceanxiously. He saw her turn pale, white as chalk, saw her eyes leap toand fro uneasily, from his left cheek to his right cheek, and backagain. Then horror came into her eyes. She clapped her hands to herface, and turned and ran away as fast as her legs would carry her. 

In utter sadness Bogdán stared after her. That was exactly the way hehad imagined their meeting again since Julia, the station-guard's wife, the woman he had grown up with, had not recognized him. But to run away!That rankled. No need for her to run away. John Bogdán was not the manto force himself on a woman. If he no longer pleased her now that he wasdisfigured, well, then she could look for another man, and he, too--hewould find another woman. He wasn't bothered about that. 

This was what he had wanted to tell Marcsa. 

He bounded after her and overtook her a few feet from the machine shop. 

"Why do you run away from me?" he growled, breathless, and caught herhand. "If you don't want me any more, you need only say so. What do youthink--I'm going to eat you up?"

She stared at him searchingly--in uncertainty. He almost felt sorry forher, she was trembling so. 

"How you look!" he heard her stammer, and he turned red with anger. 

"You knew it. I had them write to you that a shell hit me. Did you thinkit made me better-looking? Just speak straight out if you don't want meany more. Straight wine is what I want, no mixture. Yes or no? I won'tforce you to marry me. Just say it right away--yes or no?"

Marcsa was silent. There was something in his face, in his one eye, thattook her breath away, that dug into her vitals like cold fingers. Shecast her eyes down and stammered:

"But you have no position yet. How can we marry? You must first ask themaster if he--"

It was as if a red pall woven of flames dropped in front of JohnBogdán's eyes. The master? What was she saying about the master? Hethought of the humpback, and it came to him in a flash that the fellowhad not lied. His fingers clutched her wrist like a pair of glowingtongs, so that she cried out with the pain. 

"The master!" Bogdán bellowed. "What has the master got to do betweenyou and me? Yes or no? I want an answer. The master has nothing to dowith us. "

Marcsa drew herself up. All of a sudden a remarkable assurance came toher. The color returned to her cheeks, and her eyes flashed proudly. Shestood there with the haughty bearing so familiar to Bogdán, her headheld high in defiance. 

Bogdán observed the change and saw that her gaze traveled over hisshoulder. He let go her hand and turned instantly. Just what he thought--the master coming out of the machine shop. His old forester, Tóth, followed him. 

Marcsa bounded past Bogdán like a cat and ran up to the lord and bentover and kissed his hand. 

Bogdán saw the three of them draw near and lowered his head like a ramfor attack. A cold, determined quiet rose in him slowly, as in thetrenches when the trumpeter gave the signal for a charge. He felt thelord's hand touch his shoulder, and he took a step backward. 

What was the meaning of it all? The lord was speaking of heroism andfatherland, a lot of rubbish that had nothing to do with Marcsa. He lethim go on talking, let the words pour down on him like rain, withoutpaying any attention to their meaning. His glance wandered to and frouneasily, from the lord to Marcsa and then to the forester, until itrested curiously on something shining. 

It was the nickeled hilt of the hunting-knife hanging at the oldforester's side and sparkling in the sunlight. 

"Like a bayonet, " thought Bogdán, and an idea flashed through his mind, to whip the thing out of the scabbard and run it up to the hilt in thehussy's body. But her rounded hips, her bright billowing skirts confusedhim. In war he had never had to do with women. He could not exactlyimagine what it would be like to make a thrust into that beskirted bodythere. His glance traveled back to the master, and now he noticed thathis stiffnecked silence had pulled him up short. 

"He is gnashing his teeth, " it struck him, "just like the tall Russian. "And he almost smiled at a vision that came to his mind--of the lord alsogetting a smooth face and astonished, reproachful eyes. 

But hadn't he said something about Marcsa just then? What was Marcsa tohim?

Bogdán drew himself up defiantly. 

"I will arrange matters with Marcsa myself, sir. It's between her andme, " he rejoined hoarsely, and looked his master straight in the face. _He_ still had his mustache, quite even on the two sides, andcurling delicately upwards at the ends. What was it the humpback hadsaid? "One man goes away and lets his head be blown off. " He wasn't sostupid after all, the humpback wasn't. 

What Bogdán said infuriated the master. Bogdán let him shout and staredlike a man hypnotized at the nickeled hilt of the hunting-knife. It wasnot until the name "Marcsa" again struck his ear that he becameattentive. 

"Marcsa is in my employ now, " he heard the lord saying. "You know I amfond of you, Bogdán. I'll let you take care of the horses again, if youcare to. But Marcsa is to be let alone. I won't have any rumpus. If shestill wants to marry you, all well and good. But if she doesn't, she'sto be let alone. If I hear once again that you have annoyed her, I'llchase you to the devil. Do you understand?"

Foaming with rage, Bogdán let out the stream of his wrath. 

"To the devil?" he shouted. "You chase me to the devil? You had firstbetter go there yourself. I've been to the devil already. For eightmonths I was in hell. Here's my face--you can tell from my face that Icome from hell. To play the protector here and stuff your pockets fulland send the others out to die--that's easy. A man who dawdles at homehas no right to send men to the devil who have already been in hell forhis sake. "

So overwhelming was his indignation that he spoke like the humpbackSocialist and was not ashamed of it. He stood there ready to leap, withtensely drawn muscles, like a wild animal. He saw the lord make ready tostrike him, saw his distorted face, saw the riding-crop flash throughthe air, and even saw it descending upon him. But he did not feel theshort, hard blow on his back. 

With one bound he ripped the hunting-knife out of the scabbard andthrust it between the lord's ribs--not with a long sweep, so that someone could have stayed his arm before he struck. Oh, no! But quitelightly, from below, with a short jerk, exactly as he had learned byexperience in battle. The hunting-knife was as good as his bayonet. Itran into the flesh like butter. 

Then everything came about just as it always did. John Bogdán stood withhis chin forward and saw the lord's face distorted by anger suddenlysmooth out and turn as placid and even as if it had been ironed. He sawhis eyes widen and look over at him in astonishment with the reproachfulquestion, "What are you doing?" The one thing Bogdán did not see was thecollapsing of the lord's body, for at that instant a blow crashed downon the back of his head, like the downpour of a waterfall dropping froman infinite height. For one second he still saw Marcsa's face framed ina fiery wheel, then, his skull split open, he fell over on top of hismaster, whose body already lay quivering on the ground.