words, a curse which
makes them to groan and wail. It is as if they toiled to emerge from
the delusion and ignorance which soil them as the mud soils them; as if
they will at last know why they are scourged.

"Well then?" clamors one.

"Ay, what then?" the other repeats, still more grandly. The wind sets
the flooded flats a-tremble to our eyes, and falling furiously on the
human masses lying or kneeling and fixed like flagstones and
grave-slabs, it wrings new shivering from them.

"There will be no more war," growls a soldier, "when there is no more
Germany."

"That's not the right thing to say!" cries another. "It isn't enough.
There'll be no more war when the spirit of war is defeated." The
roaring of the wind half smothered his words, so he lifted his head and
repeated them.

"Germany and militarism"--some one in his anger precipitately cut
in--"they're the same thing. They wanted the war and they'd planned it
beforehand. They are militarism."

"Militarism--" a soldier began again.

"What is it?" some one asked.

"It's--it's brute force that's ready prepared, and that lets fly
suddenly, any minute."

"Yes. To-day militarism is called Germany."

"Yes, but what will it be called to-morrow?"

"I don't know," said a voice serious as a prophet's.

"If the spirit of war isn't killed, you'll have struggle all through
the ages."

"We must--one's got to--"

"We must fight!" gurgled the hoarse voice of a man who had lain stiff
in the devouring mud ever since our awakening; "we've got to!" His body
turned heavily over. "We've got to give all we have, our strength and
our skins and our hearts, all our life and what pleasures are left us.
The life of prisoners as we are, we've got to take it in both hands.
You've got to endure everything, even injustice--and that's the king
that's reigning now--and the shameful and disgusting sights we see, so
as to come out on top, and win. But if we've got to make such a
sacrifice," adds the shapeless man, turning over again, "it's because
we're fighting for progress, not for a country; against error, not
against a country."

"War must be killed," said the first speaker, "war must be killed in
the belly of Germany!"

"Anyway," said one of those who sat enrooted there like a sort of
shrub, "anyway, we're beginning to understand why we've got to march
away."

"All the same," grumbled the squatting chasseur in his turn, "there are
some that fight with quite another idea th