The U-boat creeps beneath the sea
    And puts the unarmed freighters down;
  It fills the German heart with glee
    To see the helpless sailors drown;
  But now and then a ship lets fly
    To show that Fritz has met his match! 
  She’s done her bit, and so have I
    Who dig in my potato patch.

  And later, when the War is won
    And each man murmurs, “Well, that’s that,”
  And reckons up what he has done
    To put the Germans on the mat,
  I’ll say, “It took ten myriad guns
    And fighting vessels by the batch;
  But we too served, we ancient ones,
    Who dug in our potato patch.”

ALGOL.

* * * * *

“IT.”

PHASE I.

The doctor says, perfectly cheerfully and as though it were really not a matter of vital importance, that there is no doubt that I have got IT.  He remarks that IT is all over the place, and that he has a couple of hundred other cases at the present time.

I resent his attitude as far as I have strength to do anything at all.  I did not give permission for him to be called in just to have my sufferings brushed aside like this.  He only stays about three minutes altogether, during which time he relates two funny stories (at least I suppose they are funny, because my nurse laughs; I can’t see any point in them myself), and makes several futile remarks about the War.  As though the War were a matter of importance by comparison!  Then he goes, talking breezily all the way down the stairs.

Well, I think darkly, they will be sorry presently.  I have no intention or expectation of getting better, and when they see me a fair young corpse then they’ll know.

Already I loathe the Two Hundred.  Not that I believe for a minute the story of my own disease being the same as their miserable little complaints.  In recurring periods of conscious thought I go through the list of things I know for a fact I have got—­rheumatic fever, sciatica, lumbago, toothache, neuritis, bronchitis, laryngitis, tonsilitis, neuralgia, gastritis, catarrh of several kinds, heart disease and inflammation (or possibly congestion) of the lungs.  I shall think of some more presently, if my nurse will let me alone and not keep on worrying me with her “Just drink this.”  Bother the woman!  Why doesn’t she get off the earth?  What’s the use of my swallowing that man’s filthy medicine when he doesn’t know what’s the matter with me?

I hate everybody and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me.  When in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still billowing, and seems to leer at me.  There is something fat and sinister and German about that eiderdown.  I never noticed it before. Two Hundred German eider-downs!

The firelight flickers weirdly about the room and I try to count the shadows.  But before I begin I know the answer—­TWO HUNDRED.