every German and tear him into bits. Yet you don't seem to feel
that way."
"No, I don't," he answered. "For if I had been born a Boche, I know
that I would act just like any Boche. I would do just as I was
ordered to do."
"But the men who do the ordering, the officers and the military
caste, the whole Prussian outfit?"
"Well, I have it in for that crowd," Gremberg replied, "but, you see,
I'm a Socialist, and I know they can't help it. They get their orders
from the capitalists."
The capitalists, he explained, were likewise caught in the vicious
toils of the system and could act no differently. Bayonet in hand,
he expounded the whole Marxian philosophy as he had learned it
at the Voorhuit in Ghent. The capitalists of Germany were racing
with the capitalists of England for the markets of the world, so they
couldn't help being pitted against each other. The war was simply
the transference of the conflict from the industrial to the military
plane, and Belgium, the ancient cockpit of Europe, was again the
battlefield.
He emphasized each point by poking me with his bayonet. As an
instrument of argument it is most persuasive. When I was a bit
dense, he would press harder until I saw the light. Then he would
pass on to the next point.
I told him that I had been to Humanite's office in Paris after Jaures
was shot, and the editors, pointing to a great pile of anti-war
posters, explained that so quickly had the mobilization been
accomplished, that there had been no time to affix these to the
walls.
"The French Socialists had some excuse for their going out to
murder their fellow workers," I said, "and the Germans had to go or
get shot, but you are a volunteer. You went to war of your own
free-will, and you call yourself a Socialist."
"I am, but so am I a Belgian!" he answered hotly. "We talked
against war, but when war came and my land was trampled,
something rose up within me and made me fight. That's all. It's all
right to stand apart, but you don't know."
I did know what it was to be passion swept, but, however, I went
on baiting him.
"Well, I suppose that you are pretty well cured of your Socialism,
because it failed, like everything else."
"Yes, it did," he answered regretfully, "but at any rate people are
surprised at Socialists killing one another--not at the Christians.
And anyhow if there had been twice as many priests and churches
and lawyers and high officials, that would not have delayed t
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