like more bad news,--the Germans have started another
one of those offensives. I was afraid they were getting ready for it.
West of Verdun this time. And George may be in that sector, for all I
know. How is this thing going to end, Jonathan? That damned military
machine of theirs seems invincible--it keeps grinding on. Are we going
to be able to stem the tide, or to help stem it with a lot of raw
youths. They've only had a year's training.

DR. JONATHAN. Germany can't win, Asher.

ASHER. What makes you say that? We started several years too late.

Dr. JONATHAN. And Germany started several centuries too late.

ASHER. My God, I hope you're right. I don't know.

(He walks once or twice up and down the room..)

I've had another letter.

DR. JONATHAN. This morning?

ASHER. No--I got it before I left for Washington. But I didn't bring it
in to you I wanted to think about it.

(He draws the letter, together with a folded paper, from his pocket,
and lays the paper down on the bench. Then he adjusts his glasses
and begins to read.)

"Dear dad,

"The sky is the colour of smeared charcoal. We haven't been in the
trenches long enough to evolve web feet, so mine are resting on a duck
board spread over a quagmire of pea soup. The Heinies are right here,
soaking in another ditch beyond a barbed wire fence, about the distance
of second base from the home plate. Such is modern war!

"But these aren't the things that trouble me. Last night, when I was wet
to the skin and listening to the shells--each singing its own song in
the darkness--I was able to think with astonishing ease better than if
I were sitting at a mahogany desk in a sound proof room! I was thinking
over the talk we had the day I left home,--do you remember it?--about
the real issue of this war. I've thought of it time and again, but I've
never written you about it. Since I have been in France I have had a
liberal education gathered from all sorts and conditions of men. Right
here in the trench near me are a street car conductor, a haberdasher, a
Swedish farm hand, a grocery clerk, a college professor, a Pole from the
Chicago Stock Yards, an Irish American janitor of a New York apartment
house, and Grierson from Cleveland, whose father has an income of
something like a million a year. We have all decided that this is a
war for the under dog, whether he comes from Belgium or Armenia or that
so-called land of Democracy, the United States of America