em all. He is
alive to-day, but without legs or arms. He is only twenty-two. He may live
to be seventy. The others died. Will you say that they are not better off
than he? And yet we tried to save them all. That is what we were there
for. I saw a man run a bayonet through the heart of his own brother one
day. We were working over him at the time and we knew that our efforts
would be useless. The brother knew it also. He merely did the thing we
refused to do. You want to know why I deliberately picked out of all the
wounded the men who seemed to have the least chance for recovery, and
brought them back to a place of safety. Well, I will tell you quite
frankly, why I chose those men from among all the others. They were being
left behind. They were as good as dead, as you say. I wanted to treat the
most hopeless cases that could be found. I wanted to satisfy myself. I
went about it quite cold-bloodedly,--not bravely, as the papers would have
it,--and I confess that I passed by men lying out there who might have had
a chance, looking for those who apparently had none. Seven of them died,
as you say,--seven of the 'hopelessly afflicted.' One of them lived. You
will now say that having proved to my own satisfaction that no man can be
'hopelessly afflicted,' I should be ready to admit the fallacy of my
preachings. But you are wrong. I am more firmly intrenched in my position
than ever before. That man's life should not have been saved. We did him a
cruel wrong in saving it for him. He wanted to die, he still wants to die.
He will curse God to the end of his days because he was allowed to live.
Some day his relatives will exhibit him in public, as one of the greatest
of freaks, and people will pay to enter the side shows to see him. They
will carry him about in shawl straps. He will never be able to protest,
for he has lost the power of speech. He can only _see_ and _hear_. Will
you be able to look into the agonised eyes of that man as he lies propped
up in a chair, a mere trunk, and believe that he is glad to be alive? Will
you then rejoice over the fact that we saved him from a much nobler grave
than the one he occupies in the side-show, where all the world may stare
at him at so much per head? An inglorious reward, gentlemen, for a brave
soldier of the Republic."

"We may quote you as saying, Dr. Thorpe, that you have not abandoned your
theories?"

"Certainly. I shall go on preaching, as you are pleased to call my
advocacy.