The correspondent warmed to the human atoms hurtling by and to the sergeant who stuck so fast to his arm. There was something tremendous in the delusion of these poor pawns who were doing their cruel work so well. There was an infernal majesty in the huge gamble for the old gray walls of Liaoyang on this gorgeous morning.... War is immense and final--for the big devil-clutched souls who make it--an achievement, indeed, to gather and energize and hurl this great force against an enemy, but what a rotten imposition upon the poor little obscure men who _fight_, not a tithe the richer if they take all Asia! So the thoughts of Routledge surged. Into the havoc, from time to time, he threw a sentence, wrung from the depths of his understanding: “... Once a father threw his children out of the sleigh to hold back a wolf-pack--as he whipped his horse to the village. Would you call such a man ‘father’?... Yet you call a nation ‘fatherland’ that hurls you now to the wolves!... Oh, ye of mighty faith!... Pawns--poor pawns--of plague, famine, war around the world--God, tell us why the many are consumed to ashes at the pleasure of the few!... Oh, glorious Patriotism--what sins are committed in thy name!” The great system of Russian fortifications now opened fire upon the Japanese charge. Men were falling. The bulk of the infantry avalanche had passed, and smoke was crowding out the distances. The long _p-n-n-n-g_ of the high bullets, and the instant _b-zrp_ of the close ones, were stimulus for that fast, clear thinking which so often comes close to death. Routledge’s brain seemed to hold itself aloof from his body, the better to grasp and synthesize the startling actions of the present. The smoke blurred all but a finger-bone of the valley; yet from that part he could reconstruct the whole horrid skeleton of a Twentieth-century crime.... The brown line of Japanese rolled up against the first Russian trench. Routledge thought of toy soldiers, heads bent forward, legs working, and guns of _papier maché_ in bayonet charge. The works wore a white ruff of smoke, and its lace was swept by stray winds down over the fallen.... The grip upon his arm relaxed. For a moment Routledge thought he was hit, when the blood rushed down the veins of his arm where the tightened fingers had been. He was free--and at what a cost! The little sergeant was down--his legs wriggling and beating against the American’s, the “red badge of courage” widening on his breast. Routledge bent over him and looked long into the dying face--forgetting the world and the war, forgetting all but the spirit behind the hour.