Thus it is throughout the social scale. The Boche is an animal to whom humiliation is a happiness. As he is pleased to bow down before a superior and lick his boots and grovel, so he finds joy in brutality, disdain, arrogance and haughtiness towards his inferiors. He alternately serves out or swallows disdain, blows, vexation, injuries and insults. In every Boche there is at once a Pasha and a dog. The hierarchy must be recognised in civil as in military life. Every one finds above him a superior, whom he flatters and fawns on, whose hands he licks, even though they strike him, and finds below him a scapegoat, patient and servile to the same degree.
The secret of success in Germany is for a man to let it be known that he is a degree above his neighbour in order to impose on him. It is a victory of this kind that we shall gain one day.
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In the young mists of the evening we regained the camp, but this corvée of the first of May had no morrow for us!
CHAPTER XII
THE sound of the axes has ceased. The prisoners throw their coats over their shoulders, and taking their tools—that they must place at the feet of the sentinels—their knapsacks, bowls and tins, they wait for the roll to be called. Every one is there. At the order of the commander they go towards a clearing where the men can be easily watched during the break which lasts till 1.30.