After complicated journeyings with many pauses, there had come months of monotonous life in a camp.He had had the belief that real war was a series of death struggles with small time in between for sleep and meals; but since his regiment had come to the field the army had done little but sit still and try to keep warm.
He was brought then gradually back to his old ideas.Greeklike struggles would be no more.
Men were better, or more timid.Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grap-pling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.
He had grown to regard himself merely as a part of a vast blue demonstration.His province was to look out, as far as he could, for his per-sonal comfort.For recreation he could twiddle his thumbs and speculate on the thoughts which must agitate the minds of the generals.Also, he was drilled and drilled and reviewed, and drilled and drilled and reviewed.
The only foes he had seen were some pickets along the river bank.They were a sun-tanned, philosophical lot, who sometimes shot reflectively at the blue pickets.When reproached for this afterward, they usually expressed sorrow, and swore by their gods that the guns had exploded without their permission.The youth, on guard duty one night, conversed across the stream with one of them.He was a slightly ragged man, who spat skillfully between his shoes and possessed a great fund of bland and infantile assurance.The youth liked him personally.
"Yank," the other had informed him, "yer a right dum good feller." This sentiment, floating to him upon the still air, had made him tempo-rarily regret war.
Various veterans had told him tales.Some talked of gray, bewhiskered hordes who were advancing with relentless curses and chewing tobacco with unspeakable valor; tremendous bodies of fierce soldiery who were sweeping along like the Huns.Others spoke of tattered and eternally hungry men who fired despondent powders."They'll charge through hell's fire an'
brimstone t' git a holt on a haversack, an' sech stomachs ain't a-lastin' long," he was told.From the stories, the youth imagined the red, live bones sticking out through slits in the faded uniforms.
Still, he could not put a whole faith in veter-ans' tales, for recruits were their prey.They talked much of smoke, fire, and blood, but he could not tell how much might be lies.They persistently yelled "Fresh fish!" at him, and were in no wise to be trusted.
However, he perceived now that it did not greatly matter what kind of soldiers he was going to fight, so long as they fought, which fact no one disputed.There was a more serious problem.He lay in his bunk pondering upon it.He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.
Previously he had never felt obliged to wrestle too seriously with this question.In his life he had taken certain things for granted, never challeng-ing his belief in ultimate success, and bothering little about means and roads.But here he was confronted with a thing of moment.It had sud-denly appeared to him that perhaps in a battle he might run.He was forced to admit that as far as war was concerned he knew nothing of himself.
A sufficient time before he would have allowed the problem to kick its heels at the outer portals of his mind, but now he felt compelled to give serious attention to it.
A little panic-fear grew in his mind.As his imagination went forward to a fight, he saw hide-ous possibilities.He contemplated the lurking menaces of the future, and failed in an effort to see himself standing stoutly in the midst of them.
He recalled his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of the impending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures.
He sprang from the bunk and began to pace nervously to and fro."Good Lord, what's th'
matter with me?" he said aloud.
He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless.Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail.He was an unknown quantity.
