cold. If there was a God of goodness, there wouldn't
be any cold. You can't get away from that."

"Before you can believe in God, you've got to do away with everything
there is. So we've got a long way to go!"

Several mutilated men, without seeing each other, combine in
head-shakes of dissent "You're right," says another, "you're right."

These men in ruins, vanquished in victory, isolated and scattered, have
the beginnings of a revelation. There come moments in the tragedy of
these events when men are not only sincere, but truth-telling, moments
when you see that they and the truth are face to face.

"As for me," said a new speaker, "if I don't believe in God, it's--" A
fit of coughing terribly continued his sentence.

When the fit passed and his cheeks were purple and wet with tears, some
one asked him, "Where are you wounded?"

"I'm not wounded; I'm ill."

"Oh, I see!" they said, in a tone which meant "You're not interesting."

He understood, and pleaded the cause of his illness:

"I'm done in, I spit blood. I've no strength left, and it doesn't come
back, you know, when it goes away like that."

"Ah, ah!" murmured the comrades--wavering, but secretly convinced all
the same of the inferiority of civilian ailments to wounds.

In resignation he lowered his head and repeated to himself very
quietly, "I can't walk any more; where would you have me go?"

* * * * *

A commotion is arising for some unknown reason in the horizontal gulf
which lengthens as it contracts from stretcher to stretcher as far as
the eye can see, as far as the pallid peep of daylight, in this
confused corridor where the poor winking flames of candles redden and
seem feverish, and winged shadows cast themselves. The odds and ends of
heads and limbs are agitated, appeals and cries arouse each other and
increase in number like invisible ghosts. The prostrate bodies
undulate, double up, and turn over.

In the heart of this den of captives, debased and punished by pain, I
make out the big mass of a hospital attendant whose heavy shoulders
rise and fall like a knapsack carried crosswise, and whose stentorian
voice reverberates at speed through the cave. "You've been meddling
with your bandage again, you son of a lubber, you varmint!" he
thunders. "I'll do it up again for you, as long as it's you, my chick,
but if you touch it again, you'll see what I'll do to you!"

Behold him then in the obscurity, twisting a b