t mind.'

'Say what you want to say.'

He was silent for a little while, and seemed to be in doubt how to
express what he had in his mind. I saw the old, yearning, wistful look
in his eyes, too, the look I had noticed when we were walking on The
Hoe at Plymouth.

'Has your memory come back?' I asked eagerly. 'Has it anything to do
with that?'

'No,' he replied, 'my memory has not come back. The old black wall
stands still, and yet I think it has something to do with it. I am
afraid I forget myself sometimes, sir, forget that you are an officer,
and I am a private.'

'Never mind about that now. Tell me what you have to say.'

'This war has shaken me up a bit, it has made me think. I don't know
what kind of a man I was before I lost my memory; but I have an idea
that I look at things without prejudice. You see, I have no
preconceived notions. I am a full-grown man starting life with a clean
page, that's why I can't understand.'

'Understand what?'

'I don't think I am a religious man,' he went on, without seeming to
heed me. 'When we were in England I went to Church parade and all that
sort of thing, but it had no effect upon me; it seemed to mean nothing.
Perhaps it will some day, I don't know. At present I look at things
from the outside; I judge by face values. Forgive me if I am talking a
great deal about myself, sir, and pardon me if I seem egotistical, I
don't mean to be. But you are the only officer with whom I am
friendly, and I was led to look upon you as a man of influence in
England. The truth is, I am mystified, confused, bewildered. Either I
am wrong, mad; or else we are waging this war in a wrong way.'

'Yes, how?'

'While I was in the training camps, I was so much influenced by that
speech which you gave in Plymouth, that I determined to study the
causes of this war carefully. I did so. I gave months to it. I read
the whole German case from their own standpoint. I thought out the
whole thing as clearly as I was able, and certainly I had no
prejudices.'

'Well?' I asked.

'If ever a country ought to have gone to war, we ought. If ever a
country had a righteous cause, we had, and have; if ever a Power needed
crushing, it was German power. Prussianism is the devil. I tell you,
I have been physically sick as I have read the story of what they did
in Belgium and France. I have gone, as far as I have been able, to the
tap-roots of the whole business. I have got at the philo