"The courtroom was just a plain ordinary room in the barracks at Fort Bliss; but there wasn't a map or copy of 'rules and regulations' hanging on the yellowish white walls that I can't see now, whenever I shut my eyes. I guess they were all photographed on my 'mental retina,' as the writing folks say. The three officers were in full uniform, to do honour to the case, and of course there wasn't a man present dressed in 'cits.' All were army chaps, even to the headquarters clerk who took notes of the proceedings, the orderly who kept the door, and the witnesses. There weren't many of those. I was one of the principal witnesses and you've heard from me before how little I had to say. "March, who as prisoner had to be formally conducted in by an officer, had a seat on the left of the judges' table, and his friend, Major Dell, sat beside him. If you could have been a fly on that beastly wall, looking down at your hero, I guess you'd have been proud of the way he held himself. If he'd been brought there to receive a medal of honour instead of to be tried for a big, insane sort of offence calculated to bring about international complications he couldn't have had a prouder bearing. And he wasn't even pale. He looked just brown and calm and natural. I had to confess to when you asked me a point-blank question that night in the park, that I was all muddled up in my mind about his conduct in ordering the gunfire. I didn't know whether he'd gone off his chump, or been fooled, or what. But I can tell you one thing: I felt proud of him as a man and as my superior officer when I saw the way he bore himself for his trial. I don't know now the rights of the matter any more than I did then, in spite of the court's findings; but something tells me--as girls say--that March _wasn't to blame_. There's a black mystery in this, and I don't see how it's ever going to be cleared up, as things are. But to go back to the court-martial. "March was accused by the prosecutor of having fired without orders three charges from field guns into a country living at peace with the United States, to the detriment of its inhabitants and property, and to the imminent peril of disturbing international relations. He could have objected legally to any of the judges and stated his objections. But he didn't object to them, nor to the shorthand-writer, whom he had a right to throw out if he could show reasons for thinking that the man was likely to be partial in his notes of the proceedings.