end of the trench. What
do you see?"

What I saw was a barbed-wire entanglement, leading into a cul-de-sac.

"A rabbit trap!" he said. "They will come over the field there, and
because they cannot cross the entanglement they will follow it. It is
built like a great letter V, and this is the point."

The sun had gone down to a fiery death in the west. The guns were
firing intermittently. Now and then from the poplar trees came the
sharp ping of a rifle. The evening breeze had sprung up, ruffling the
surface of the water, and bringing afresh that ever-present and
hideous odour of the battlefield. Behind us the trenches showed signs
of activity as the darkness fell.

Suddenly the rabbit trap and the trench grew unspeakably loathsome and
hideous to me. What a mockery, this business of killing men! No matter
that beyond the canal there lurked the menace of a foe that had
himself shown unspeakable barbarity and resource in plotting death. No
matter if the very odour that stank in my nostrils called loud for
vengeance. I thought of German prisoners I had seen, German wounded
responding so readily to kindness and a smile. I saw them driven
across that open space, at the behest of frantic officers who were
obeying a guiding ambition from behind. I saw them herded like cattle,
young men and boys and the fathers of families, in that cruel rabbit
trap and shot by men who, in their turn, were protecting their country
and their homes.

I have in my employ a German gardener. He has been a member of the
household for years. He has raised, or helped to raise, the children,
has planted the trees, and helped them, like the children, through
their early weakness. All day long he works in the garden among his
flowers. He coaxes and pets them, feeds them, moves them about in the
sun. When guests arrive, it is Wilhelm's genial smile that greets
them. When the small calamities of a household occur, it is Wilhelm's
philosophy that shows us how to meet them.

Wilhelm was a sergeant in the German Army for five years. Now he is an
American citizen, owning his own home, rearing his children to a
liberty his own childhood never knew.

But, save for the accident of emigration, Wilhelm would to-day be in
the German Army. He is not young, but he is not old. His arms and
shoulders are mighty. But for the accident of emigration, then,
Wilhelm, working to-day in the sun among his Delphiniums and his iris,
his climbing roses and flowering shrubs,