I talked with the man a little more and he opened up his heart to me. At best life is a strange thing to understand. Here were two human beings who previously, by heredity or environment, or else their own devilishness, had been evil characters. They were known as such by their acquaintances and they knew each other as such. Their lives had been unenviable to say the least, and then at last through war, that fearful and awful thing, each man had been made better and the angel had come out of what before seemed a devil. Not only was Paul a bad man but he had hated the other man and yet here he was doing a noble and self-sacrificing deed and not only that, but doing it for his enemy; giving up his life for his old foe. And here was the other man, showing a gratitude which was noble towards the man he had hated and who had tried to kill him. He gave up his own shirt and took off his own socks to try to keep warm the feet of the dying Paul and to keep the blood, which meant life, in his body. It did not accomplish the result but my narrator would not take back his socks as he said he wanted the man who died for him to have this little gift and be buried in them. Such heroism is not uncommon in the trenches. After all there are some compensations even for war. In many instances it may bring out all the hate and the hell that is in a man's heart but I have also seen hundreds of cases where it made men much better than they had ever been before. It made them better men and better Christians; not necessarily of the shouting type but of the kind, of which One said: "He that giveth a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, shall not lose his reward," and again, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." But someone may think I am preaching. Well, if I am, I am preaching the gospel of service and sacrifice, which to my mind is the greatest gospel there is to preach at the present critical hour. I am trying to tell men that they can be better men wherever they are if they will it so. I have known men to go over there from various walks of life, some of them from wealthy homes and high salaried positions to engage in this or that line of work, perhaps relieving suffering without getting anything for their labor, and yet boast that they had received more than they had ever gotten in their lives before, and it was true. They developed a feeling of kinship for the suffering, and a satisfaction in assuaging their pain which was a greater compensation than anything they had ever had or could ever have expected. I have known men to go over in the very trenches themselves and there learn the lesson of self-control and humility which is in reality learning to respect the rights of other people; men who formerly had been accustomed to having their own way in life. [Illustration: _Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._ A DRESSING STATION SET UP ON NEWLY CAPTURED GROUND.