He watches the rats. Why are they so impudent and important? He grows so accustomed to them, he does not even squirm, when they run across him in the darkness at night. He knows they have enough camp offal and dead men’s bodies—they do not eat the living. He watches the cat with interest. She is an old timer and has seen regiments come and go. Her owners are in exile—they have no home—the Germans took it. So, pussy, a lady of sense and good taste, dwells with the French soldiers. He looks at her long, lanky frame and wishes for some milk to give her, to counteract the poison of the rat food. A shell comes along. Pussy runs into the dugout, but comes out again to be petted. Another shell, again she scurries away. Kitty does not like shells any more than do humans. War is the great leveler. Deplored as pitiless destroyer, it more than equalizes, a creator of good. It annihilates property, kings and thrones; but it produces men. It taps hitherto unseen springs of sympathy and mutual helpfulness, where thrived formerly but the barren waste of self-sufficiency. It unmasks the humbug and reveals the humanitarian. It teaches individual self-lessness. The cruelties of the oppressor are overcome by love for the oppressed. The dominance of wickedness is brought low by sweet charity for its victims. CHAPTER XVII THE INVADED COUNTRY I have seen the German under many conditions. In the early days of the war, I used to listen to his songs—sung very well. But, he does not sing now. I have watched the smoke rise, in the early morning, as he cooked his breakfast. I have dodged his flares, his grenades, and his sentinels, at night. I have heard his shovels ring as he dug himself down, and have listened to his talk to his neighbor. I have seen him come up on all fours, from his dugout, crying “Kamarad”; and I cannot say, that, as a common soldier, he is a bad fellow. The brutality seems to start with the sous-officer. It gets more refined and cruel as rank goes up. I have noticed the dazed, hopeless expression of pregnant women at Sillery-Sur-Marne. They stayed under fire of the guns, rather than carry their grief into safety. They emerged from their Calvary, with faces as of the dead, impassive, masklike, hiding scars of agony.