He muttered in an undertone something about “being luckier in prison in winter than out there on the cold, freezing ground,” and, flinging his knapsack upon his shoulder, lumbered off.  In how many such hearts is there this sullen revolt against the military system, and how much of a factor will it be to reckon with in the future?

There were four prisoners quite separated from the rest of us.  It was said that they were sentenced to be shot.  I am not sure that they were; but we were strictly forbidden any intercourse with them.  They were the most crestfallen, terror-stricken lot of men that ever I had laid eyes upon, and at four o’clock they were led away by a cordon of soldiers.  There was enough mental suggestion about it to plunge the room into a deep silence.  It was oppressive.

At last Obels, the reporter, walked over and asked me if there were proofs of the immortality of the soul, excusing himself by saying that up to this time he had never had any particular time nor reason for reflection on this subject.  That was the only psychological blunder that he made.  However, it at last broke the heavy, painful silence, and we speculated together, instead of singly, how it might feel to have immortal bliss thrust upon us from the end of a German musket.

I related to him my experience of the previous week.  Some war photographers wanted a picture of a spy shot.  I had volunteered to play the part of a spy, and, after being blindfolded, was led over against a wall, where a Belgian squad leveled their rifles at me.  I assured him that the sensation was by no means terrible; but he would not be comforted.  Death itself he wouldn’t mind so much, if he could have found it in the open fighting gladly for his country; but it seemed a blot on his good name to be shot for just snooping around the German lines.

On the whole, after weighing all the pros and cons, we decided that our pronounced aversion to being shot had purely an altruistic origin.  It was a wicked, shameful loss to the human race.  That point was very clear to us.  But there was the arrant stupidity of the Germans to be reckoned with.  They have such a distorted sense of real values.  Rummaging through my pockets during these reflections, I fished up an advertising folder out of a corner where I had tucked it when it was presented to me by Dr. Morse.  The outside read, “How We Lost Our Best Customer.”  Mechanically I opened it, and there, staring back at me from big black borders on the inside, were the two words, “He died.”

These ruminations upon matters spiritual were interrupted by the strains from a brass band which went crashing by, while ten thousand hobnailed boots of the regiment striking the pavements in unison beat out time like a trip-hammer.

“Perhaps the Germans are leaving Brussels,” whispered a companion; “and wouldn’t we grow wild or faint or crazy to see those guards drop away and we should find ourselves free men again!”