"I felt my blood run cold," said Harry, "but I hadn't time to be afraid. I feel worse now. Look at my hand shaking."
Ginger, very pale, was mechanically cleaning his rifle. He flung it down with a curse.
"What have they done to me?" he cried. "What have they done to me? I killed an officer, a nice young chap as might have been your brother. What for? What about his mother? And all those poor chaps yonder: why can't them as make wars let us alone? Men ain't made to kill each other. What's the good of it all? When the war's over, millions dead, millions crippled, millions miserable. It didn't ought to be."
"We're serving our country, Ginger," said Kenneth. "It's not a question of just the present moment. We've got to think of the future. What would life be worth to our people at home if the Germans had their way? You can get nothing good without paying the price, and it will be good if we can teach the Germans and the world that force isn't everything, that people have a right to live their own lives without being bullied. For every man that dies, whether English or German, perhaps thousands may have a better time in days to come. That's worth fighting for, and dying for, if need be. We've all got our little part to play. It's not a thing you can argue about: you feel it. Look at what Sir Edward Grey said: he'd rather cut the old country altogether than be obliged to give up our good English ways and to put up with German tyranny. Don't you feel like that too? Well, that's why we are fighting; we're fighting to call our souls our own, and, please God, we'll win."
CHAPTER XI
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GINGER
It was when the battalion next returned to billets that the meaning of Ginger's confabulations with the men of other platoons came out.
One evening after supper Kenneth and Harry were smoking in the Bonnards' kitchen. They were alone. Ginger and the other members of their billet had left them some little while before, and the men's faces had worn the sly, conscious look of those who are meditating a secret design.
"If I didn't know Ginger, I should think they were up to some mischief," Harry had said.
Presently the door opened, and Ginger reappeared, at the head of eight or ten men from other platoons of No. 3 Company. They all looked a little sheepish and uncomfortable as they filed into the room. Some hung back and were pushed forward by their mates. Ginger moved to the rear, and was instantly seized by several hands and expostulated with in fierce whispers.