"If you have no money for traveling you can't take furlough." I thought to myself that if they took me deep into France they were in conscience bound to take me back to where they had fetched me. Was I to be a soldier for three years and fight for the Fatherland for more than a year only to find that now they refused the free use of their railroads to a ragged soldier? I explained that I was not going to pay, that I could not save the fare from the few pfennigs' pay. I refused explicitly to pay a soldier's journey with my private money, even if--as was the case here--that soldier was myself. Finally I told him, "I must request you to inform the military railroad commander; the depot command attends to soldiers, not you." He sent me a furious look through his horn spectacles and disappeared. Two civilians were sitting in the same compartment with me; they thought it an unheard-of thing that a soldier coming from the front should be asked for his fare. Presently the depot commander came up with a sergeant. He demanded to see my furlough certificate, pay books, and all my other papers. "Have you any money?" "No." "Where do you come from?" "From Chatel in the Argonnes." "How long were you at the front?" "In the fourteenth month." "Been wounded?" "No." "Have you no money at all?" "No; you don't want money at the front." "The fare must be paid. If you can't, the company must pay. Please sign this paper." I signed it without looking at it. It was all one to me what I signed, as long as they left me alone. Then the sergeant came back. "You can not travel in that compartment; you must also not converse with travelers. You have to take the first carriage marked 'Only for the military.' Get into that." "I see," I observed; "in the dogs' compartment." He turned round again and said, "Cut out those remarks." The train started, and I arrived safely home. After the first hours of meeting all at home again had passed I found myself provided with faultless underwear and had taken the urgently needed bath. Once more I could put on the civilian dress I had missed for so long a time. All of it appeared strange to me. I began to think. Under no conditions was I going to return to the front. But I did not know how I should succeed in getting across the frontier. I could choose between two countries only--Switzerland and Holland. It was no use going to Switzerland, for that country was surrounded by belligerent states, and it needed only a little spark to bring Switzerland into the war, and then there would be no loophole for me. There was only the nearest country left for me to choose--Holland. But how was I to get there? There was the rub. I concocted a thousand plans and discarded them again. Nobody, not even my relatives, must know about it. (How this German soldier fled from the war and escaped to America is told in his book: "A German Deserter's War Experiences;"--Copyright, 1917, B. W. Huebsch.) FOOTNOTE: