“Hold on, Giraffe, that’s enough!” he hastened to exclaim. “You’ll have me all black and blue if you keep that going. I’m sure of it now.”
“Sure of what?” asked Allan, chuckling, for this was not the first time he had seen this interesting little circus play come off between the two chums.
“That I’m awake, and didn’t just dream about that awful battle!”
Bumpus shuddered as though he had suddenly been taken with a chill that foretold a visitation of the ague or malaria. They knew from this that the sights he had recently witnessed must have made a tremendous impression on his mind, and would probably haunt him for many a long day.
“I guess all of us feel pretty much the same way you do, Bumpus,” Thad informed him. “We’re sorry to have seen such sights, and yet glad at the same time. It was an opportunity that few American scouts could ever expect to have come their way. And if we could have done any good we’d have been only too glad of a chance to offer our services.”
“They’d have laughed at us if we’d risked it,” asserted Allan.
“And like as not bundled us all into a dungeon for suspects,” added Giraffe, although he immediately added, “but say, did you ever see such dauntless bravery as those same Germans showed when they marched straight up to that bridge, and every time a hole was torn in their ranks closed in as if on dress parade.”
“Oh! I don’t know,” spoke up Bumpus, “it struck me that handful of Belgians showed the real stuff in the way of bravery, holding out with ten or twenty times their number against them. The German brand of courage seems to be different from some others I know of. They are parts of a big machine, and have to touch elbows when they fight.”
Giraffe was up in arms at once, but Thad poured oil on the troubled waters.
“Listen, Giraffe,” he said, “this is what Bumpus means, and I’ve read the same thing more than once; even high German generals have admitted it. Germans soldiers are not trained to take the initiative like our men and the French are. They are educated to obey orders as a unit, and a company of them will walk directly into the jaws of death with a courage that couldn’t be beaten. But there’s little of that hurrah and dash and single-handed work we’re accustomed to associating with heroic actions.”