The poor fellow was in deep seas, and breathing hard. Everything about him proclaimed the fact that he was a German, even to his field-gray uniform, and he knew it. But he did not venture to contradict Van Hee, and he whispered hoarsely: "No, I am not a German either." He was completely demoralized, a picture of utter desolation. "If you are not German, or Belgian, or French, or English, what are you then?" The poor fellow whimpered: "0 Gott! I don't know what I am." "I'll tell you what you are. You're an American!" exclaimed Van Hee with great gusto. "That's what you are--an American! Get that? An American!" "Ja, ja ich bin ein Amerikaner!" he eagerly cried ("Yes, yes, I am an American!"), relieved to find himself no longer a man without a country. Had he been told that he was a Hindoo, or an Eskimo, he would have acquiesced as obediently. But when he was shown an American flag and it began to dawn on him that he had nothing more to fear from his captors, his tenseness relaxed. And when Van Hee said: "As the American consul I shall do what I can for you. What is it you want the most?" a light shone in the German's eyes and he replied: "I want to go home. I want to see my wife and children." "I thought you came down here because you wanted to see the war," said Van Hee. "War!" he gasped, and putting hands up to his eyes as if to shut out some awful sights, he began muttering incoherently about "Louvain," "children screaming," "blood all over his breast," repeating constantly "schrecklich, schrecklich." "I don't want to see any more war. I want to see my wife and my three children!" "The big guns! Do you hear them?" he said. "I don't want to hear them," he answered, shaking his head. "They're killing you Germans by the thousands down there," announced Van Hee. "I should think you would want to get out and kill the French and the English." "I don't want to kill anybody," he repeated. "I never did want to kill anybody. I only want to go home." As we left him he was repeating a refrain: "I want to go home"--"Schrecklich, schrecklich." "I never did want to kill anybody." Every instinct in that man's soul was against the murder he had been set to do. His conscience had been crucified. A ruthless power had invaded his domain, dragged him from his hearthside, placed a gun in his hands and said to him: "Kill!" Perhaps before the war, as he had drilled along the German roads, he had made some feeble protest. But then war seemed so unreal and so far away; now the horror of it was in his soul. A few days later Van Hee was obliged to return him to the German lines. Again he was marched out to the shambles to take up the killings against which his whole nature was in rebellion. No slave ever went whipped to his task with greater loathing.