Striding down the roadway past the mangled body of the American gunner, Winslow reached the culvert.

Ethel Calvert was sitting on a flat stone at the edge of the water.  She held her woven grass sandals in her hands and was washing them by rubbing the soles together in the stream.

As Winslow looked down at her in silence, the girl looked up and eyed him curiously.  Neither spoke.  The man stooped and washed his hands in the brook and then stepping up-stream a few paces he drank from the rivulet.

Returning he regarded the girl.  She had placed her sandals beyond her on the grassy bank and sat with her bare feet in the shallow stream.  Her head, buried in her arms, rested upon her knees.  The slender shoulders now shook convulsively and the sound of a sob escaped her.  In the calmness of his cynicism, the man sat down on the rock and placed a strong arm around the trembling woman.

[Illustration:  In another moment, he turned in a gap through the fence and rode down upon the fleeing woman.]

“I know,” he said, “it’s a dirty damned mess, but we didn’t start it.”

After a time the girl raised her head.  “I know we didn’t start it,” she said; “but isn’t there something we can do to stop it?”

“Well,” he replied slowly, “I rather hope to have a hand in stopping it, and perhaps you can help.”

“How?”

“Surely you can do as much in stopping it as one of those poor devils that get smashed does in keeping it going,” he went on.

“How?” she repeated.

“Well, that’s quite a long story,” he replied; “if you don’t already know.”

“I told you who I was.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the Regenerationists, along with many other sincere men and women in this country tried to prevent this war and are trying to get it peaceably settled now.  The Japs don’t want to die.  They want a chance to live.  We’ve got a lot of vainglorious, debauched, professional soldiery that wanted to fight something, and now they’re getting their fill.  In the first place, there is no need of war and in the second place, when there is war, the same stamina that will make efficient humans for the ordinary walks of life will make good soldiers.  But money talks louder than reason.  The ruling powers in American government are a crew of beer-bloated politicians who are in the pay of a cabal of wine-soaked plutocrats, and the American people under such administration have become a race of mental and physical degenerates.  The Japs knew this or they would never have invaded the country.”

“What are you going to do about it?  And what are you doing here now within the Japanese lines?” asked Ethel when her companion paused.

“Oh, I am acting as my own war correspondent,” he replied, smiling a little.

“Pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat”—­Winslow jumped up excitedly and clambered to the top of the embankment.

Ethel noting his alarm, slipped her feet into her sandals and rose to follow him.