“Look,” he said, “each medal represents a human life, a head.  We have these given us for every head we bring back in war.  Do you think I am proud of them, and there are more than fifty?  No, I weep when I see them.  When I had seized my foe by his hair preparatory to cutting off his head, a vision of his mother, his wife, and his sisters appeared before me, and I could have wept as I struck off his head.  Why should I kill this man?  I asked myself.  I know him not, he has done me no harm, yet because it is war, arranged by princes and kings, we must become murderers.  And why should I kill him? because others would misconstrue my act of mercy if I did it not, and brand me a coward, aye and worse, a traitor.  Why should I make that mother childless? why must I rob that loving wife of her husband?  Why I be the means of making those little children fatherless and orphans?”

I confess the picture that he conjured up of solemnly and with streaming eyes cutting off his enemies’ heads—­and he had owned to over fifty—­as he thought of destitute homes and weeping women and children, seemed decidedly tragi-comic; but the old man was earnest enough, and was quite unconscious of the grim humour of the situation.

“Why,” he went on, excitedly pacing the room, “why do not the German Emperor and the King of England fight out their quarrels alone?  Why drag thousands of men from their homes and farms to fight their quarrels?”

Again the idea of our King fighting a solemn duel, with perhaps Maxims, over a question of an island in the Pacific, with the German Emperor, while admiring millions looked on and applauded, caused a smile which we with difficulty repressed from diplomatic reasons.

He took his scimitar now in his hand.

“Look, too, at the generals,” he said excitedly, “directing battles from safe places, while hundreds of innocent lives are thrown away in an assault which that general has ordered from his place of safety.  Once,” he went on—­“I was fighting for the Turks then, and commanded a body of soldiers—­a general came to me, saying, ‘Storm that hill,’ and I answered, ‘No; thou art our leader, lead us to the assault.’  And he refused, saying, ’How can I direct the battle if I lead this attack—­who shall take my place if I fall?’ And I drew my sword”—­and here he suited his action to his words—­“and said I would kill him if he did not take his true position as leader of men and lead us to the attack—­then I and my men would follow wherever he went.  And the general, who was a brave man, led us to the assault and fell—­but we took the hill and the battle was won.”

It was strange talk to hear from such a man, little better than a savage, yet unlike any of his adopted countrymen.  That man in a civilised country would have made himself known and even celebrated.