"Well," he said, "of course they deserved it! Of course it is a crime to kill the wounded. But, gentlemen, there are cases when it is impossible not to kill the wounded!"
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Just what I said! There is such a thing as rightful killing of the wounded!"
We insisted, and the Junior Subaltern narrated a recent experience of his, "somewhere in Bukowina." He had been in command of a party of scouts. His regiment had just arrived to take the place of another infantry regiment. And the first thing to do was to become acquainted with the locality and to learn the dispositions and intentions of the enemy. The Junior Subaltern was sent out with his company. At one place the opposing armies were separated by a ravine, which forked out toward our trenches. Lieutenant X. knew that the men of the regiment his was replacing had become acquainted with the Austrians, and that the enemies by day came together at the bottom of the ravine by night, entertained one another, and gossiped.
"War is burdensome, gentlemen!" explained the Junior Subaltern, "and we all longed for even the semblance of human intercourse with the other chaps. * * * And there happened to be a prolonged and tiresome spell of calm between battles, and so the men of the regiment we were replacing and the Austrians had long smokes together, exchanging pipes. But every one remembered—and nobody held it against any one—that the course of cigarettes must be closely interwoven with the course of bullets on the morrow. * * * Yet, yet—oh, if we were only chivalrous knights, conducting a picturesque tournament, instead of common Russian cannon fodder fighting common Austrian cannon fodder. * * *"
Of course our young friend wanted to do the magnanimous thing by the enemy, sending round word to them, "Here we come! Get ready!" But what he did do was to take advantage of the quiet exchange of the two Russian regiments and the total ignorance in which the Austrian members of the nightly smoking club in the ravine still remained, and to creep noiselessly forward to the spot where the friends of the night before were on guard. The Austrian sentinels—three of them—dozed, wrapped in their blankets. The Russians crept stealthily forward. * * *
"What else could we do?" asked the Junior Subaltern. "Humanitarian ideas are in blank contradiction to the present war. Civilians at home may try to judge everything in accordance with these ideas. Well, we know they are mistaken. Oh, they are simply ridiculous!" ended the Junior Subaltern, his good-natured, broad face blushing at making such a bold statement in company.
II—"WHEN WE LEAVE NO WOUNDED ALIVE"
"Such nonsense!" he went on. "Of course, at the back of our minds the horror of it is always present. But what else can you do? Standing in blood up to your throat, and knowing that you have to protect your men, to protect yourself. * * * And what difference does it make to them whether you shoot them or throttle them? * * * About a hundred paces from those three sentinels there were at least a hundred others, and two hundred yards off were the Austrian trenches. The least noise, a groan, the stifled cry of a wounded Austrian would be the end of everything for my scouts; and there were only thirty of us. That was when I gave the order not to leave any wounded alive. * * *"
It was an evident relief to him to be interrupted.