“Wars must take place,” said Eugene firmly. “My grandfather asserts it.”
“Your grandfather is—that is, you are mistaken. Wars don’t need to take place. In the late one in this country, when we were all seething hotheads, why didn’t we apply to foreign countries to settle our dispute?”
“Arbitration—ah! that is not for gentlemen,” said the boy proudly.
The sergeant smiled. “Lad,” he said, “you’re just like all the rest of growing things. You have got to learn for yourself. You won’t take a leaf out of any other body’s book. Do you believe me when I say that if you were to enlist to-day, and go on the field to-morrow, that your little body would quiver and shake, and you’d want to turn tail and run, like one of those cats, when you heard the big guns?”
“I would never run.”
“Possibly you might not,” said the sergeant amiably. “I’m not going to say that all men do, though I believe most men want to. Well, we’ll say you’ve got through the first engagement, and have a nice undangerous wound in the fleshy part of your leg. You’d admire the battlefield, wouldn’t you, and the agony of men and horses heaped up, and you’d go to the hospital and see the wounded, and smell the sickening smells, and enjoy yourself?”
“A soldier must look on blood.”
“Yes, he must—tears and blood. Why, lad, if all the women that lost husbands and fathers and lovers could hover over a battlefield, there would be a good sharp shower like rain on it.”
“It is necessary for women to cry,” remarked Eugene.