Dabnitz smiled cheerfully. “They're afraid of their hides. When a man does a lot of talking, he is generally shy on action—”
Peter saw the ease of the acceptance of this view on the part of the others; saw how clearly it was the view of the military man.
“And yet it was a clean-cut death of that talker and his two companions you just executed—”
“An exception now and then,” Dabnitz granted.
“How do you catch them?”
“We have a system at work for that purpose—everywhere, especially in the hospitals. There isn't much temporizing when we get them.”
Peter Mowbray's skull prickled with heat and his face was cold with sweat.
“What do they preach?” he managed to ask.
“Sometimes for men to rise and go home; sometimes for them to cease to kill, and sometimes to shoot down the officers. It isn't all that a man has to do now to lead his men forward,” Dabnitz observed. “He must do that, of course, but all the danger isn't in front. It doesn't follow that a man has turned his back upon the enemy nowadays—if he happens to be found with a wound in the back.”
“Were these—these that you put out this morning—working in the hospitals?”