Our pace was more rapid now; we ran with lights from the last hut. In twenty minutes we were in brigade headquarters, where in the morning we had registered and secured our passes. I thought again of the major who in arranging our papers had shown attention to certain details that concerned the safety and comfort of the private soldier. His consideration had particularly impressed me. Democracy differs from Autocracy in more ways than one when she goes to war.
Brigade headquarters was just out of the zone of shell-fire—not that guns of large caliber could not have reached it, but the German front opposite it had thus far been satisfied with visiting aërial bombardments upon it. Half a dozen open mines behind the village testified to the poor aim but clear intention of an aviator who the day before had sought to destroy its warehouses.
As we drew away from the slumbering but well-guarded town, off at the right, dimly outlined against the swelling bosom of the hill, I saw white crosses. With arms outreaching they stood above our new-made graves. In the distance could still be heard the voices of the guns, and the leaden sky grew rosy where the great shells broke.
We were only a few minutes late for our midnight supper. I pulled off my mud-laden boots in a daze. I had lived, it seemed, a thousand years in fifteen hours. What a Christian Endeavor tour it had been! Into a dozen States it had carried me, and back to a hundred choice and stirring memories. I crept into my blankets with a mixture of emotions no mortal can analyze, but in it was unspeakable gratitude to the blessed boys who are the supermen of our American citizenship, the torch-bearers of civilization, the road-makers of Christian peace.
Chapter XII
THE HYMN OF HATE
"Saw a Dutchman to-day, saw him from here up."
The speaker indicated with his hands that part of a man's body between hips and head.
"You know I'm a pretty good shot. Didn't see him again."