The general started, bit his underlip, and glanced aside with a look
that would have made every staff officer of the ----th Army shake in his
boots. With a visible effort he put on his polite smile and pointed
across the square to the open portals of the old cathedral.

"The only advice I can give is for you to go over there and ask our
Heavenly Father. He is the only one who can answer that question."

A friendly nod, a hearty handshake, then His Excellency strode to his
office across the square amid the respectful salutations of the crowd.
When he entered the building the dreaded furrow cleaving his brow was
deeper than ever. An orderly tremblingly conducted him to the office of
the head army physician. For several minutes the entire house held its
breath while the voice of the Mighty One thundered through the
corridors. He ordered the fine old physician to come to his table as if
he were his secretary, and dictated a decree forbidding all the inmates
of the hospitals, without distinction or exception, whether sick or
wounded, to leave the hospital premises. "For"--the decree concluded--
"if a man is ill, he belongs in bed, and if he feels strong enough to go
to town and sit in the coffee-house, he should report at the front,
where his duty calls him."

This pacing to and fro with clinking spurs and this thundering at the
cowering old doctor calmed his anger. The storm had about blown over
when unfortunately the general's notice was drawn to the report from the
brigade that was being most heavily beset by the enemy and had suffered
desperate losses and was holding its post only in order to make the
enterprise as costly as possible to the advancing enemy. Behind it the
mines had already been laid, and a whole new division was already in
wait in subterranean hiding ready to prepare a little surprise for the