make the prejudice English, Italian, German, Russian, or French and
there is the temptation for reader and author to forget the story of men
as men and war as war. Even as in the long campaign in Manchuria I would
see a battle simply as an argument to the death between little fellows
in short khaki blouses and big fellows in long gray coats, so I see the
Browns and the Grays in "The Last Shot" take the field.

But, though the scene is imaginary, the characters are from life. Their
actions and their sayings are those of men whom I have studied under the
stress of danger and sudden emergency. The delightful, boyish confidence
of Eugene Aronson has been at my elbow in a charge; Feller I knew in the
tropics as an outcast who shared my rations; Dellarme's last words I
heard from a dying captain; the philosophy of Hugo Mallin is no less
familiar than the bragging of Pilzer or the transformation of Stransky,
who whistled a wedding-march as he pumped bullets at the enemy. In
Lanstron we have a type of the modern officer; in the elder Fragini a
type of the soldier of another day. Each marches in his place and plays
his part in the sort of spectacle that I have often watched. If there be
no particular hero, then I can only say, in confidence behind the
scenes, that I have found no one man, however heroic in the martial
imagination of his country, to be a particular hero in fact. Take, for
example, our trembling little Peterkin, who won the bronze cross for
courage.

As for Marta and Minna, they speak for another element--for a good half
of the world's population that does not bear arms. In a siege once I had
glimpses of women under fire and I learned that bravery is not an
exclusively masculine trait. The game of solitaire? Well, it occurred in
a house in the midst of bursting shells. But the part that Marta plays?
Is it extravaganza? Not in war. The author sees it as something very