claims so that others who had already shed their blood out there should
not have to go again for him.

A dull, impotent rage came over him when he stepped up in front of his
men ranged in deep rows. They stared at his lips in breathless suspense.
What was he to say to them? It went against him to reel off compliantly
the usual patriotic phrases that forced themselves on one's lips as
though dictated by an outside power. For months he had carried about the
defiant resolve not to utter the prescribed "_dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori_," whatever the refusal might cost. Nothing was so
repulsive to him as singing the praises of the sacrifice of one's life.
It was a juggler's trick to cry out that some one was dying while inside
the booth murder was being done.

He clenched his teeth and lowered his eyes shyly before the wall of
pallid faces. The foolish, childlike prayer, "Take care of us!" gazed at
him maddeningly from all those eyes. It drove him to sheer despair.

If only he could have driven them back to their own people and gone
ahead alone! With a jerk he threw out his chest, fixed his eyes on a
medal that a man in the middle of the long row was wearing, and said:

"Boys, we're going to meet the enemy now. I count upon each of you to do
his duty, faithful to the oath you have sworn to the flag. I shall ask
nothing of you that the interest of our fatherland and your own interest
therefore and the safety of your wives and children do not absolutely
require. You may depend upon that. Good luck! And now--forward, march!"

Without being conscious of it, he had imitated Weixler's voice, his
unnaturally loud, studiedly incisive tone of command, so as to drown the