Just as the field-kitchen wagon had arrived this morning, a shell had exploded in the road and it was all over with the kitchen-wagon. How long ago that seemed! And the bees keep on humming. Bang! that hit the sergeant right in the middle of the forehead. Is this never going to stop? Never? You chew sand, you breathe sand, burning dry sand, which passes through your intestines like fire. And then that horrible, faint, sickening feeling in the stomach when you feel the ambulance men creeping up behind to take away another one of your comrades! How terrible he looks, how he screams! You are quite incensed to think that anybody can yell like that! What a fool! "Aim carefully, fire slowly," warns the lieutenant. Bouncing puffs of smoke again! And sand in your mouth and fire in your intestines. You think continually of water, beautiful, clear, ice-cold water, never-ending streams of water-- A roaring, howling and crashing overhead, the clatter of splinters, a sharp pain in your brain and a horrible feeling in your stomach and all the time it goes buzz, buzz, buzz--ssst--ssst--buzz, buzz, buzz---- That is war, not the pictures that people see at home, all those lucky people who have lots of water, who can go where they like and are not forced to stay where the bees keep up a continual buzz, buzz, buzz---- Colonel Katterfeld was kneeling on the ground examining the map of Hilgard and marking several positions with a pencil. He could overhear the conversation of the soldiers under the board-covering next to his own. "Do you think all this is on account of the Philippines?" asked one. "The Philippines? Not much. It would have come sooner or later anyhow. The Japs want the whole Pacific to themselves. We wouldn't be here if it were only for the Philippines." "We wouldn't? It's on account of imperialism, then, is it?" "Don't talk foolish. We know very well what the Japs want, imperialism or no imperialism." "Well, why are the papers always talking so much about imperialism?" "They write from their own standpoint. Imperialism simply means that we wish to rule wherever the Stars and Stripes are waving." The colonel peeped into the adjacent cover. It was Sergeant Benting who was speaking. "Right you are, Benting," said the colonel, "imperialism is the desire for power. Imperialism means looking at the world from a great altitude. And the nation which is without it will never inherit the earth." Then the colonel gave the order to fire at a house on the right side of the street, in which a bursting shrapnel had just effected a breach and out of which a detachment of infantry was seen to run.