I thought about him that night when I sat with the blanket wrapped around me, and I wondered about this German soldier.  He evidently belonged to the same class as the first German soldier I had met after I was captured, who tried to bandage my shoulder when the shells were falling around us; to the same class as good old Sank at Giessen, who, though he could speak no English, made us feel his kindness in a hundred ways; to the same class as the German soldier who lifted me down from the train when on my way to Roulers.  This man was one of them, and I began to be conscious of that invisible brotherhood which is stronger and more enduring than any tie of nationality, for it wipes out the differences of creed or race or geographical boundary, and supersedes them all, for it is a brotherhood of spirit, and bears no relation to these things.

To those who belong to it I am akin, no matter where they were born or what the color of their uniform!

Then I remembered how bitterly we resented the action of a British Sergeant Major at Giessen, who had been appointed by the German officer in charge to see after a working party of our boys.  Working parties were not popular—­we had no desire to help the enemy—­and one little chap, the Highland bugler from Montreal, refused to go out.  The German officer was disposed to look lightly on the boy’s offense, saying he would come all right, but the British Sergeant Major insisted that the lad be punished—­and he was.

I thought of these things that night in the cell, and as I slept, propped up in the corner, I dreamed of that glad day when the invisible brotherhood will bind together all the world, and men will no more go out to kill and wound and maim their fellow-men, but their strength will be measured against sin and ignorance, disease and poverty, and against these only will they fight, and not against each other.

When I awakened in the morning, stiff and cramped and shivering, my dream seemed dim and vague and far away—­but it had not entirely faded.

That day the guard who brought me soup was a new one whom I had not seen before, and he told me he was one of the twenty-five new men who had been sent down the night we escaped.  I was anxious to ask him many things, but I knew he dared not tell me.  However, he came in and sat down beside me, and the soup that he brought was steaming hot, and he had taken it from the bottom of the pot, where there were actual traces of meat and plenty of vegetables.  Instead of the usual bowlful, he had brought me a full quart, and from the recesses of his coat he produced half a loaf of white bread—­“Swiss bread” we called it—­and it was a great treat for me.  I found out afterwards that Ted had received the other half.  The guard told me to keep hidden what I did not eat then, so I knew he was breaking the rules in giving it to me.

He sat with his gun between his knees, muzzle upwards, and while I ate the soup he talked to me, asking me where I came from, and what I had been doing before the war.