Our pace was more rapid now; we ran with lights from the last hut. In twenty minutes we were in brigade headquarters, where in the morning we had registered and secured our passes. I thought again of the major who in arranging our papers had shown attention to certain details that concerned the safety and comfort of the private soldier. His consideration had particularly impressed me. Democracy differs from Autocracy in more ways than one when she goes to war. Brigade headquarters was just out of the zone of shell-fire--not that guns of large caliber could not have reached it, but the German front opposite it had thus far been satisfied with visiting aërial bombardments upon it. Half a dozen open mines behind the village testified to the poor aim but clear intention of an aviator who the day before had sought to destroy its warehouses. As we drew away from the slumbering but well-guarded town, off at the right, dimly outlined against the swelling bosom of the hill, I saw white crosses. With arms outreaching they stood above our new-made graves. In the distance could still be heard the voices of the guns, and the leaden sky grew rosy where the great shells broke. We were only a few minutes late for our midnight supper. I pulled off my mud-laden boots in a daze. I had lived, it seemed, a thousand years in fifteen hours. What a Christian Endeavor tour it had been! Into a dozen States it had carried me, and back to a hundred choice and stirring memories. I crept into my blankets with a mixture of emotions no mortal can analyze, but in it was unspeakable gratitude to the blessed boys who are the supermen of our American citizenship, the torch-bearers of civilization, the road-makers of Christian peace. CHAPTER XII _THE HYMN OF HATE_ "Saw a Dutchman to-day, saw him from here up." The speaker indicated with his hands that part of a man's body between hips and head. "You know I'm a pretty good shot. Didn't see him again." Pause. "Do you know what I've been thinking ever since? I've been hoping he isn't in my fix; I hope he doesn't have a wife and kid." The red-headed sergeant from Boston was the spokesman--a sharpshooter and a fluent user of Sunday-school language--in his own lurid way. It was night, and he had been hanging around for some time waiting his chance to "spill himself." I shall forget all of my own speeches, but never his. I was moved too deeply for words. I stuck my hand out, and said, "Put her there!" and he understood. I heard no hymn of hate on our line in France. I saw prisoners of war treated like men; they had fought like men, our fellows said. I saw wounded prisoners brought out with every consideration and care. And as the result of a raid that came over early in March a German captain of infantry lies by the side of an American captain of infantry. He was buried with military honors. Why? That was the question I asked, and the answer I received was a look of surprise.