see here, when the newspapers speak complacently of the superb artillery preparation which after three days of cannon-duel silences the enemy's batteries, do you know what that means to me? It means I am squatting all day in an underground shelter, with twenty wounded, the German shells falling one a minute over my head, my supplies of bandages gone, my anæsthetics gone, no cotton, not even a cup of water left. To see them die there, begging for help, calling for their mothers ... to crouch there helpless, all day long, hearing the shells falling, and wondering which one will come through the roof--oh, you have plenty of time to think the whole proposition over, the business you're in. You have time, let me tell you, to have your own opinion of the imbecility of setting one highly civilized man down in filth and degradation to shoot at others. When some idiot of a journalist, reporting the war, speaks of the warlike ardor of the men, how it is difficult to restrain them until the order to charge is given ... when we read such paragraphs in the papers ... if you could hear the snarl that goes up! We 'charge' when the word of command is given, yes, because we know nothing better to do, but ..." The sentimental aunt breaks in resolutely: "Of course, it's very noble of you, Paul; the fact is simply that you don't or won't recognize your own courage." "Courage, nonsense! A rat in a hole, surrounded by other rats putrefying ... that's what I am in my underground shelter! What else can I do? What else can we any of us do? We can't get away! There wouldn't be anywhere to go if we did! But when I think of the people at the rear, how they don't know, will never know, the sickening hours the troops live through. See here! No sensitive, civilized being can forget it if he has only _once_ been wholly filthy, wholly bestial ... and we have been that, time without number. When I come back to Paris on furlough and look at the crowds in the Paris streets, the old men with white collars, and clean skins, the women with curled hair and silk stockings, I could _kill_ them, when I think that they will have a voice in the future, will affect what will be done hereafter about war ..." "Time for your train, Paul," warns the elder brother soberly. The man who had been reviling the life of a soldier springs instantly to his feet and looks anxiously at his watch. He claps on his blue steel casque. We try to give a light touch to the last of his stay. "How medieval those helmets make you look!" He is not to be distracted. "Put it further back, stone-age, cannibalistic," he cries bitterly, marching out hurriedly so that he may be promptly at his task.