ldren and
our womenfolks to live in. We didn't brag about God being on our side,
like the boches do. It was enough for us to know WE was on GOD'S side
and fighting His great fight for Him. We had patriotism and religion
and Right, behind us, to give us strength.

"Brucie hadn't a one of those things. He didn't know what he was here
for--and why he'd been pitched out of his nice home, into all this. He
didn't have a chance to say Yes or No. He didn't have any spellbinders
to tell him he was making the world safe for d'mocracy. He was MADE to
come.

"How would any of us humans have acted, if a deal like that had been
handed to us? We'd 'a' grouched and slacked and maybe deserted. That's
because we're lords of creation and have souls and brains and such.
What did Bruce do? He jumped into this game, with bells on. He risked
his life a hundred times; and he was just as ready to risk it again the
next day.

"Yes, and he knew he was risking it, too. There's blame little he
didn't know. He saw war-dogs, all around him, choking to death from
gas, or screaming their lives out, in No Man's Land, when a bit of
shell had disemboweled 'em or a bullet had cracked their backbones. He
saw 'em starve to death. He saw 'em one bloody mass of scars and sores.
He saw 'em die of pneumonia and mange and every rotten trench disease.
And he knew it might be his turn, any time at all, to die as they were
dying; and he knew the humans was too busy nursing other humans, to
have time to spare on caring for tortured dogs. (Though those same dogs
were dying for the humans, if it comes to that.)

"Yes, Bruce knew what the end was bound to be. He knew it. And he kept
on, as gay and as brave as if he was on a day's romp. He never
flinched. Not even that time the K.O. sent him up the hill for
reenforcements at Rache, when every sharpshooter in the boche trenches
was laying for him, and when the machine guns were trained on him, too.
Bruce knew he was running into death--, then and a dozen other times.
And he went at it like a white man.

"I'm--I'm getting longwinded. And I'll stop. But--maybe if you boys
will remember the Big Dog--and what he did for us,--when you get back
home,--if you'll remember him and what he did and what thousands of
other war-dogs have done,--then maybe you'll be men enough to punch the
jaw of any guy who gets to saying that dogs are nuisances and that
vivisection's a good thing, and all that. If you'll just do that much,
th