"But you have been gassed three times," I said, "I should think they
ought to let you return to civil life and your family."

The soldier looked hard at the insignia of my rank as captain. "You
professional officers don't know much, do you? A soldier quit and do
common labor, now that's a fine idea. And a family! Do you think I'm a
Hohenzollern?" At the thought the soldier chuckled. "Me with a family,"
he muttered to himself, "now that's a fine idea."

I saw that I was getting on dangerous ground but curiosity prompted a
further question: "Then, I suppose, you have nothing to hope for until
you reach the age of retirement, unless war should come to an end?"

Again the soldier eyed me carefully. "Now you do have some queer ideas.
There was a man in our company who used to talk like that when no
officers were around. This fellow, his name was Mannteufel, said he
could read books, that he was a forbidden love-child and his father was
an officer. I guess he was forbidden all right, for he certainly wasn't
right in his head. He said that we would go out on the top of the ground
and march over the enemy country and be shot at by the flying planes,
like the roof guards, if the officers had heard him they would surely
have sent him to the crazy ward--why he said that the war would be over
after that, and we would all go to the enemy country and go about as we
liked, and own houses and women and flying planes and animals. As if the
Royal House would ever let a soldier do things like that."

"Well," I said, "and why not, if the war were over?"

"Now there you go again--how do you mean the war was over, what would
all us soldiers do if there was no fighting?"