“Remember your telling me about visiting at Fort Riley when you were quite a youngster?  The good time you had?—­how gay it was?  How charming your host was?  As nearly as I can figure it out, I was there at the same time, filling the noble office of garbage man.  Now, far be it from me, believing in the dignity of all labor, to despise the office of garbage man.  I can think of conditions under which I would be quite happy to serve my country in that capacity.  But having enlisted because of the noble figure of a soldier carrying a flag, I grew pretty sore at the ‘Damn you, we’ve got you’ manner in which I was ordered to carry things—­well, not to be too indelicate let us merely say things less attractive than the flag.

“It’s not having to peel potatoes and wash dishes; it’s seeming to be despised for doing it that stirs in men’s hearts the awful soreness that makes them deserters.

“In our regiment men were leaving right along.  Our company had a particularly bad record on desertions.  Our captain, a decent fellow, was away most of the time and the lieutenant in command was a cur.  I’d find a more gentle word for him if I could, but I know none such.  Army men talk a great deal about discipline.  But there’s a difference between discipline and bullying.  This fellow couldn’t issue an order without making you feel that difference.

“He had a laugh that was a sneer.  It wasn’t a laugh, just a smile; a smile that sneered.  He couldn’t pass a crowd of men cutting grass without making their hearts sore.

“I don’t say he’s the typical army man.  I don’t doubt that there are men high in the army who, if all were known, would despise him as much as the men in his company did.  But I do say that if there were not a good many a good deal like him more than fifty thousand young men of America would not have deserted from the United States army in the past twelve years.

“There was a fellow in our company I had been particularly sorry for.  He wasn’t a bad sort at all; he was more dazed than anything else; didn’t understand the army manner; the army snobbishness.  This lieutenant couldn’t look at him without making him sullen.

“One day he told him to do a loathsome thing, then stood there with that sneering smile watching him do it.  Well, he did it, all right; that’s what gets you, that powerlessness under what you know for injustice.  But that night he left.

“I knew he was going.  He wanted me to go with him.  I don’t know why I didn’t.  I don’t blame men for deserting.  But for my own part, it would only be two years more; I used to say to myself, ’You got into this.  You’ll see it through.’

“They caught him, brought him back the next day.  I happened to be there at the time.  So did our spick and span lieutenant.  The man who had been caught—­or boy, rather, for he was but that—­was anything but spick and span.  His clothes were torn and muddy, his face dirty and bloody—­it had been scratched by something.  He knew what he was in for.  Court martial and imprisonment for desertion.  We knew what that meant.