Three young men having run the guard line, together are walking along a dark road toward a southern city. In the city and later when they have stood on street corners and walked through the section of the city where only Negroes live--being Ohio boys and fascinated by the strangeness of the notion of a race thus set aside--they go into a saloon where they sit drinking beer. They discuss their officers, the position of the officer in relation to his men. “I think it’s all right,” says a doctor’s son. “Ed and Dug are all right. They have to live off by themselves and act as though they were something special, kind of grand and wise and gaudy. It’s a kind of bluff, I guess, that has to be kept up, only I should think it would be kind of tough on them. I should think they might get to feeling they were something special and get themselves into a mess.” And now Ed, the raiser of celery, comes into the saloon. He is saving all he can of his officer’s pay hoping to buy a few additional acres of land when he gets back home and he doesn’t much like spending money. He sees the three sitting there and wants to join them but hesitates. Then he calls to me and he and I go off together along a street and into another saloon. The celery raiser is a devout Catholic and he and I get into a discussion. I have some money and am buying the beer and so it goes on for a long time. I speak of the feeling I have when I have marched for a long time in rhythm with many other men and Ed nods his head. “It’s the same way I feel about the Church,” he says. “That’s just the way we Catholics get to feeling about the Church.” At the camp Ed, being an officer, can walk boldly in but I, being but a corporal and having gone off to town without leave, must creep along the guard line to where a fellow from my own town is stationed. “Who goes there?” he demands sternly; and “Ah, cut it Will, you big boob. Don’t make such a racket,” I answer as I go past him and creep away in the darkness to my tent. And now I am in the tent, awake beside five sleeping men and I am filled with drinks and thinking of war. What a strange idea that men should need a war to throw many of them for a time into a common mood. Is there unison only in hatred? I do not believe it but the idea fascinates me. Men form a democracy but in the end must throw the democracy aside in order to make the army that shall protect and preserve democracy. The guard and myself creeping past him to my tent are as soldiers a little absurd. Is all feeling of comradeship, of brotherhood between many men, a little absurd? BOOK THREE NOTE I