I looked through the ward door once or twice during the evening, and still his knees, at the far end of the room, were moving up and down.
It must happen to the men in France that, living so near the edge of death, they are more aware of life than we are.
When they come back, when the postwar days set in, will they keep that vision, letting it play on life ... or must it fade?
And some become so careless of life, so careless of all the whims and personalities and desires that go to make up existence, that one wrote to me:
"The only real waste is the waste of metal. The earth will be covered again and again with Us. The corn will grow again; the bread and meat can be repeated. But this metal that has lain in the earth for centuries, the formation of the beginning, that men have sweated and grubbed for ... that is the waste."
What carelessness of worldly success they should bring back with them!
Orderlies come and go up and down the corridor. Often they carry stretchers—now and then a stretcher with the empty folds of a flag flung across it.
Then I pause from laying my trays, and with a bunch of forks in my hand I stand still.
They take the stretcher into a ward, and while I wait I know what they are doing behind the screens which stand around a bed against the wall. I hear the shuffle of feet as the men stand to attention, and the orderlies come out again, and the folds of the flag have ballooned up to receive and embrace a man's body.
Where is he going?