, and I thanked him warmly. He
told me he would have to take it away again in the morning when he
came on guard again, and I knew he did not want any of the other
guards to see it. My word of thanks he cut short by saying, "Bitte!
bitte! Ich thue es gerne" (I do it gladly); and his manner indicated
that his only regret was that he could not do more.

I thought about him that night when I sat with the blanket wrapped
around me, and I wondered about this German soldier. He evidently
belonged to the same class as the first German soldier I had met
after I was captured, who tried to bandage my shoulder when the
shells were falling around us; to the same class as good old Sank
at Giessen, who, though he could speak no English, made us feel his
kindness in a hundred ways; to the same class as the German soldier
who lifted me down from the train when on my way to Roulers. This
man was one of them, and I began to be conscious of that invisible
brotherhood which is stronger and more enduring than any tie of
nationality, for it wipes out the differences of creed or race
or geographical boundary, and supersedes them all, for it is a
brotherhood of spirit, and bears no relation to these things.

To those who belong to it I am akin, no matter where they were born
or what the color of their uniform!

Then I remembered how bitterly we resented the action of a British
Sergeant Major at Giessen, who had been appointed by the German
officer in charge to see after a working party of our boys. Working
parties were not popular--we had no desire to help the enemy--and one
little chap, the Highland bugler from Montreal, refused to go out.
The German officer was disposed to look lightly on the boy's offense,
saying he would come all right, but the British Sergeant Major
insisted that the lad be punished--and he was.

I thought of these things that night in the cell, and as I slept,
propped up in the corner, I dreamed of that glad day when the
invisible brotherhood will bind together all the world, and men will
no more go out to kill and wound and maim their fellow-men, but their
strength will be measured against sin and ignorance, disease and
poverty, and against these only will they fight, and not against each
other.

When I awakened in the morning, stiff and cramped and shivering, my
dream seemed dim and vague and far away--but it had not entirely
faded.

That day the guard who brought me soup was a new one whom I had not
seen befor