I followed Pest into the presence of the major,--we ran a dead heat!--and heard his report. The major smiled, a trifle anxiously, told us of the _comparative_ safety we had really enjoyed because of the soft ground and high explosives, and then inquired, "Did the carriers stay with the prisoner?" Pest replied, "I am not sure, sir; I did not look around, but I am inclined to think that he is out there alone." Some one felt it in order to remark that if the Hun wanted to kill his own wounded, he ought to be given the privilege of doing so "without mussing up any good Americans"; and then the major said: "Yes, _he's a Hun, but we're Americans. Go back and get him._" I am writing these lines more than five thousand miles from the candle-lighted room in the bomb-shelter of that battalion headquarters; but, as I write them, I cross the sea, and stand again by the side of the rough table where I stood that March afternoon when the major startled me out of my terror into soberness and quiet with his "Yes, he's a Hun, but we're Americans. Go back and get him." I believe that I am better for trying to give the German the benefit of the doubt; for _half_ thinking that, after all, he may not have recognized the nature of the party crossing the open field. But the major waived the whole question of German "frightfulness," and leaped at once into the heart of American traditions of war and America's military idealism. He saw only a prisoner, wounded and under fire, and--he knew his duty. And before we continue this story let us halt for a moment with the "major." I saw him only once and under tense and extreme circumstances. His battalion had just come through a baptism of fire that will not be forgotten when the story of America's part in the great war is told. I do not know how he looked in a dress uniform or when he was clean-shaven; I have no conception of what his carriage was in a drawing-room; and I am uninformed as to his church affiliation--if he had any. But he acted like a soldier that afternoon and talked like a Christian. I am sure that he was every inch a soldier, too; for he fought through the Spanish-American war, and was a major in the Philippine constabulary. He enlisted in the British army; but, when the Stars and Stripes came to stand by the side of the Union Jack, he _moved over_, and was commissioned a major in the national army. I intended to write him a letter after I returned; but now that will be unnecessary, for to-day at the top of a column I read, "American colonel killed in action," and below, "Lieutenant-Colonel Richard H. Griffiths; commanding a battalion of infantry, has been killed by shell-fire in Picardy. He emerged from a dugout just as a German shell arrived and exploded directly in front of him." And now he stands at attention before the Commander whose orders, whether he thought of it in that way or not, he so completely obeyed.[1]