t he would have his permission in three
more months. The rest of the boys also said nice things. Suddenly we
realized that the French captain was acting very strangely and saying
excited things with his back towards us. We did not know how we had
insulted him, nor could we understand what had happened. Finally my
colonel said to him:

"'Captain, I hope you will have your vacation soon and have a chance to
go home and see your family.'

"He turned on us like a crazy man. He put his fists in the air, he half
shouted and half sobbed at us.

"'How do you men dare talk to me about going home? Your land has never
been invaded, nor your families ruined. Home! How can I go home? The
Germans have had my town for a year. In their retreat they carried away
my little girl and my young wife, and now the priest has gotten word to
me that in six weeks my little girl and my young wife will both have
babes by the German beast who carried them off.'

"And then the Frenchman cursed God and cursed the devil! Cursed the
Kaiser and cursed the Fatherland. Oh, it was so terrible. Doctor, I
often wonder how Americans could have left the women and girls of
Belgium and France in hell for two and a half years, while you men
stood in safety and in peace."

The historian will find it hard to answer that question. History will
have it to say that England was the good Samaritan who helped the
Belgians who had fallen among thieves, while Americans were among those
who passed by on the other side.

7. "This War Will End Within Forty Years"

A New Zealand officer was giving directions to a group of his soldiers.
They were in the field at the foot of Bapaume. The immediate task was
that of cutting and rolling up the barbed wire. In that territory the
Germans had left trenches foul with fever, wells filled with the corpses
of men and horses, springs polluted with every form of filth, but worst
of all, the barbed wire entanglements. Every sharp point was covered
with rust and threatened lockjaw. Looking in every direction, the whole
land was yellow with the barbed wire. The work was dangerous. The
rebound of the wire threatened the eye with its vision, threatened the
face and the hand, and all the soldiers were in a mood of rebellion. In
an angry mood, the officer exclaimed, "There are a hundred million miles
of German barbed wire in France!"

And when later I asked the first lieutenant how long this war would
last, he made the instant answer, "