“It’s no good cursing the Germans. As soon as your troops entered the village they had a right to shell. That’s war. We should do the same. War’s war. I’ve been cursing the Germans in elaborate and eccentric language. It did me good. I feel all the better for it. But all the same I was wrong. It’s war we ought to curse. War which makes these things possible among civilised peoples. It’s just devilry. Civilised people must give up the habit. They must get cured of it. You have heard of typhoid-carriers? They are people infected with the typhoid microbe who spread the disease. When peace comes we must hunt down the war-carriers, isolate them, and, if necessary, kill them.” He waved his hand to me and went off in an ambulance filled with suffocated women. I met Brand in Valenciennes five days after our liberation of the city, when our troops were making their formal entry with band and banners. He came up to me and said, “Have you heard the news?” I saw by his face that it was good news, and I felt my heart give a lurch when I answered him. “Tell me the best.” “Germany is sending plenipotentiaries, under a white flag, to Foch. They know it is unconditional surrender.... And the Kaiser has abdicated.” I drew a deep breath. Something seemed to lift from my soul. The sky seemed to become brighter, as though a shadow had passed from the face of the sun. “Then it’s the end?... The last battle has been fought!” Brand was staring at a column of troops--all young fellows of the 4th Division. His eyes were glistening, with moisture in them. “Reprieved!” he said. “The last of our youth is saved!” He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in the deepest melancholy. “You and I ought to be dead. So many kids were killed. We’ve no right to be alive.” “Perhaps there is other work to do,” I answered him, weakly, because I had the same thought. He did not seem sure of that. “I wonder!... If we could help to save the next generation----”