ed, on a day, his views of the
great war. He talked plain language about the Germans. He specified why
he considered the nation a disgrace to humanity--most people, not
German, agree on the thesis and its specifications. Then the fire of his
ancient fighting blood blazed through restraint of manner. He drew up
his tall figure, slim-waisted, deep-shouldered, every inch sliding
muscle. "I am too old to go on first call to army," said Rafael. "Zey
will not take me. Yes, and on second call. Maybe zird time. But if time
come when army take me--I go. If I may kill four Germans I will be
content," stated Rafael concisely. And his warrior forebears would have
been proud of him as he stated it.

My reflections were disturbed here by the American general at the next
table. He was spoken to by his waiter and shot up and left the room,
carrying, however, his napkin in his hand, so that I knew he was due to
come back. A half sentence suggested a telephone. I watched the
soldierly back with plenty of patriotic pride; this was the sort of
warrior my country turned out now by tens of thousands. With that he
returned, and as I looked up into his face, behold it was Fitzhugh.

My chair went banging as I sprang toward him. "Jim!"

And the general's calm dignity suddenly was the radiant grin of the boy
who had played and gone to school and stolen apples with me for a long
bright childhood--the boy lost sight of these last years of his in the
army. "Dave!" he cried out. "Old Davy Cram!" And his arm went around my
shoulder regardless of the public. "My word, but I'm glad!" he
sputtered. And then: "Come and have dinner--finish having it. Come to
our table." He slewed me about and presented me to the three others.

In a minute I was installed, to the pride of my friend the head waiter,
at military headquarters, next to Fitzhugh and the Frenchman. A campact
resume of personal history between Fitzhugh and myself over, I turned to
the blue figure on my left hand, Colonel Raffre, of the French, army. On
his broad chest hung thrilling bits of color, not only the bronze war
cross, with its green watered ribbon striped with red, but the blood-red
ribbon of the "Great Cross" itself--the cross of the Legion of Honor. I
spoke to him in French, which happens to be my second mother tongue, and
he met the sound with a beaming welcome.

"I don't do English as one should," he explained in beautiful Parisian.
"No gift of tongues in my kit, I fear; also I'