It is this spirit of man's thoughtfulness for his brother, man's tenderness with man, that reassures me when I ask, "How will this stupendous man-hunt affect the heart of the race?" And the fighter is not unaware of the question. Indeed, he asks it himself. I heard a young major who was saying a farewell to a group of his friends at a church banquet in a Canadian city say,
"I go away determined, God helping me, to do my hardest duty; to render my country and the empire an enthusiastic and utmost service; and to carry myself so that when I come back, if I come back, little children will run to me as confidently as they do now."
What is the spirit of the trenches? It is the spirit of service that has no interrogation points. One night a shriek of agony came ringing back to our line from a listening-post in No Man's Land. A chaplain was "up," a Roman Catholic. He crawled down the shallow communicating trench to the wounded soldier, found him with a foot smashed by a grenade, unconscious, and bleeding to death. He stanched the flow of blood as best he could, and somehow got the man back. And then, after the stretcher party had carried the "casualty" to the dressing-station, and while they waited for the ambulance, he prayed with the lad. A few days later he said to me, "I didn't think a Catholic's prayer would hurt a Protestant boy." And it was a Protestant padre, we are told, who ministered to the dying Major Redmond on a battle-field of Flanders.
There is no "grousing" in the trenches. I heard no complaints from men who were straining their vital forces to the utmost. It is great to hear them when they come out, though! How they do vent their spleen upon springs that are a bit uneven, these fellows who have been wallowing in mud and ice for days without a word in their misery!
A runner came in one morning after thirty-six hours of continuous duty. He was chilled to the bone, and one foot was in bad shape. He had neither overcoat nor blankets; his entire equipment had been buried by the shelling incident to a raid. We leaned him against the great tea-boiler, and while he stood there warming his body we poured hot drinks into his stomach. Turning away for a moment, I was startled by a clatter behind me. There he was, his cup on the floor; he was dead asleep on his feet.
I have seen lads fall asleep on the rough boards of a Y. M. C. A. hut, with only the nondescript materials for covers that we could hastily throw over them. Not even the noises of great batteries, and of hundreds of soldiers passing in and out, disturbed them in the least.
Not a whimper, not a whisper of rebellion, came from them. Oh, I do not believe that I shall ever again complain about any hardship without despising myself. What a task we at home have, to be worthy of them!
There are so many tales of unalloyed courage, and so many to tell them well, that I have purposely committed this chapter largely to a very faulty pen-picture of another side of the spiritual portrait of the American soldier. His bravery is very prompt and very honest, and no soldier of the world is braver. He confesses his fear, which is not pretended; tells how fast he ran, how paralyzed his tongue was, how he caught himself saying, "Engine, engine number nine, running on Chicago line," or wiping his forehead with his revolver! But all the time he has not turned away from the line of duty by a single hair.
The type of his courage is unmistakable. It would be very poor form for an American to speak of this in any way that would make invidious comparisons, and to speak thus would insult the American soldier, who so thoroughly appreciates and so enthusiastically magnifies at his own expense the prowess of our allies who have done so much for us, who for four years have stood between us and destruction, and who even now must very largely teach us the modern art of national self-defence. "Private Peat" was of course over-enthusiastic in his praise, but he indicated a quality of bravery that I never failed to find in the American army in France when he said: "They are far ahead of the English and French in many ways. They are more active, more quick in thinking, and can decide in an instant what to do in battle. They have already made a wonderful record. Every allied soldier honors them." I saw the native genius of American fliers strikingly illustrated in an aviation contest between student fliers and their instructors. Every event—bomb-dropping, handling of machine guns, and trick flying—was won by the students.