. What's human life? What's the value of one
man's throat? We're trained up as murderers--I don't dislike it, mind
you--and after the war we sha'n't get out of the habit of it. It'll come
nat'ral like!"

He was talking for my benefit, egged on to further audacities by a group
of comrades who roared with laughter and said: "Go it, Bill! That's the
stuff!" Among these Lilliputians were fellows who sat aloof and sullen,
or spoke of their adventure with its recent horror in their eyes. Some
of them had big heads on small bodies, as though they suffered from
water on the brain... Many of them were sent home afterward. General
Haldane, as commander of the 6th Corps, paraded them, and poked his
stick at the more wizened ones, the obviously unfit, the degenerates,
and said at each prod, "You can go... You. ..You...." The Bantam
Division ceased to exist.

They afforded many jokes to the army. One anecdote went the round. A
Bantam died--of disease ("and he would," said General Haldane)--and a
comrade came to see his corpse.

"Shut ze door ven you come out," said the old woman of his billet.
"Fermez la porte, mon vieux."

The living Bantam went to see the dead one, and came downstairs much
moved by grief.

"I've seed poor Bill," he said.

"As-tu ferme la porte?" said the old woman, anxiously.

The Bantam wondered at the anxious inquiry; asked the reason of it.

"C'est a cause du chat!" said the old woman. "Ze cat, Monsieur, 'e 'ave
'ad your friend in ze passage tree time already to-day. Trois fois!"

Poor little men born of diseased civilization! They were volunteers to a
man, and some of them with as much courage as soldiers twice their size.

They were the Bantams who told me of the Anglican padre at Longueval. It
was Father Hall of Mirfield, attached to the South African Brigade. He
came out to a dressing station established in the one bit of ruin which
could be used for shelter, and devoted himself to the wounded with a
spiritual fervor. They were suffering horribly from thirst, which made
their tongues swell and set their throats on fire.

"Water!" they cried. "Water! For Christ's sake, water!"

There was no water, except at a well in Longueval, under the fire of
German snipers, who picked off our men when they crawled down like wild
dogs with their tongues lolling out. There was one German officer there
in a shell-hole not far from the well, who sat with his revolver handy,
and he was a dead shot.

But he did