m not an Englishman, but there are several
million Englishmen haven't done as much for England in this was as I
have. What do you fellows know about it? You write about it, about the
'brave lads in the trenches'; but what do you know about the trenches?
What you've seen from automobiles. That's all. That's where you get
off! I've lived in the trenches for fifteen months, froze in 'em,
starved in 'em, risked my life in 'em, and I've saved other lives, too,
by hauling men out of the trenches. And that's no airy persiflage,
either!"

He ran to the wardrobe where John's clothes hung, and from the bottom
of it dragged a khaki uniform. It was still so caked with mud and snow
that when he flung it on the floor it splashed like a wet bathing suit.
"How would you like to wear one of those?" he Demanded. "Stinking with
lice and sweat and blood; the blood of other men, the men you've helped
off the field, and your own blood."

As though committing hara-kiri, he slashed his hand across his stomach,
and then drew it up from his waist to his chin. "I'm scraped with
shrapnel from there to there," said Mr. Hamlin. "And another time I got
a ball in the shoulder. That would have been a 'blighty' for a
fighting man--they're always giving them leave--but all I got was six
weeks at Havre in hospital. Then it was the Dardanelles, and sunstroke
and sand; sleeping in sand, eating sand, sand in your boots, sand in
your teeth; hiding in holes in the sand like a dirty prairie dog. And
then, 'Off to Servia!' And the next act opens in the snow and the mud!
Cold? God, how cold it was! And most of us in sun helmets."

As though the cold still gnawed at his bones, he shivered.

"It isn't the danger," he protested. "It isn't that I'm getting away
from. To hell with the danger! It's just the plain discomfort of it!
It's the never being your own master, never being clean, never being
warm." Again he shivered and rubbed one hand against the other.
"There were no bridges over the streams," he went on, "and we had to
break the ice and wade in, and then sleep in the open with the khaki
frozen to us. There was no firewood; not enough to warm a pot of tea.
There were no wounded; all our casualties were frost bite and
Pneumonia. When we take them out of the blankets their toes fall off.
We've been in camp for a month now near Doiran, and it's worse there
than on the march. It's a frozen swamp. You can't sleep for the cold;
can't eat; the on