“And France bled white!... We know,” the words halted, “the country for which we went to war is maimed—scarred—she can never again be the same France, but—” his lifted face gleamed through the dim light, “our battle cry has changed! We no longer fight ‘Pour la Patrie!’ but ‘Pour le Droit!’—the right that is greater than country!”
With a sharp intake of breath he turned to his comrade. Fouquet’s protesting look was gone. With the sure touch of reality he picked up the story.
“It was all over in a breath, sir—like a mist swirling along the trenches shot through with phantom steel, and we knew our work was being done. When it lifted—the ditch lay motionless!
“The women had dropped on their knees with their arms about the children. We passed the poor little ones through to the rear in charge of the wounded.
“The first trench was piled with dead—unmarked dead! The communicating tunnels were cleared or quiet; that was how we made up the forty seconds and followed the barrage on time to the second ditch.
“I looked down the line as we made ready for the second charge. Not a Hun cried ‘Kamarad!’ or tried to surrender when they saw the faces of the Avengers. The second ditch was piled with nearly as many dead as the first—marked dead! The Avengers and the White Battalion had retaken the ground for which the —nth had given their lives.
“That is all, sir,” the gaunt figure in mud-stained blue straightened, “excepting that the fouling Beast is going in the end—we know! He cannot stand against the unconquerable dead. And when we march through Berlin, the White Armies will march at the head of the column—” he lifted his hand in salute, “Pour le Droit!”
The crippled aviator balanced on crutches as he brought up his hand.
“Pour le Droit!”
Noiselessly the men of the Foreign Legion pushed back their chairs and stood at salute. Silently they faced each other in a long moment of understanding. The major in blue dropped his arm and with smiling eyes gripped the hand of the man in khaki.