“And by and by he died, still doing his work and asking no pay.

“He didn’t work with the idea of getting a cross or a ribbon or a promotion or a pension or his name in the paper or to make the crowd cheer him when he got back home, or to brag to the homefolks about how he was a hero.  He just went ahead and was a hero.  That’s because he was only a dog, with no soul—­and not a man.

“All of us humans are working for some reward, even if it’s only for our pay or for the fun of doing our share.  But Bruce was a hero because he was just a dog, and because he didn’t know enough to be anything else but a hero.

“I’ve heard about him, before he joined up with us.  I guess most of us have.  He lived up in Jersey, somewhere.  With folks that had bred him.  I’ll bet a year’s pay he was made a lot of by those folks; and that it wrenched ’em to let him go.  You could see he’d been brought up that way.  Life must ‘a’ been pretty happy for the old chap, back there.  Then he was picked up and slung into the middle of this hell.

“So was the rest of us, says you.  But you’re wrong.  Those of us that waited for the draft had our choice of going to the hoosgow, as ‘conscientious objectors,’ if we didn’t want to fight.  And every mother’s son of us knew we was fighting for the Right; and that we was making the world a decenter and safer place for our grandchildren and our womenfolks to live in.  We didn’t brag about God being on our side, like the boches do.  It was enough for us to know we was on god’s side and fighting His great fight for Him.  We had patriotism and religion and Right, behind us, to give us strength.

“Brucie hadn’t a one of those things.  He didn’t know what he was here for—­and why he’d been pitched out of his nice home, into all this.  He didn’t have a chance to say Yes or No.  He didn’t have any spellbinders to tell him he was making the world safe for d’mocracy.  He was made to come.

“How would any of us humans have acted, if a deal like that had been handed to us?  We’d ‘a’ grouched and slacked and maybe deserted.  That’s because we’re lords of creation and have souls and brains and such.  What did Bruce do?  He jumped into this game, with bells on.  He risked his life a hundred times; and he was just as ready to risk it again the next day.

“Yes, and he knew he was risking it, too.  There’s blame little he didn’t know.  He saw war-dogs, all around him, choking to death from gas, or screaming their lives out, in No Man’s Land, when a bit of shell had disemboweled ’em or a bullet had cracked their backbones.  He saw ’em starve to death.  He saw ’em one bloody mass of scars and sores.  He saw ’em die of pneumonia and mange and every rotten trench disease.  And he knew it might be his turn, any time at all, to die as they were dying; and he knew the humans was too busy nursing other humans, to have time to spare on caring for tortured dogs. (Though those same dogs were dying for the humans, if it comes to that.)