one of these freight cars (much the same
kind of car as that in which we were confined during the trip from
Brussels to Aix--apparently used as a horse-stall on the previous trip,
and with no bedding beyond a damp pile of straw in one corner) the
American noticed a young German private. This particular fellow was not
wounded. He wore no bandages; he was the only occupant of the
horse-stall; and he paced up and down the boards, muttering, muttering,
continually muttering to himself. Now and then he snatched up a musket,
went through the form of fixing a bayonet, and again and again lunged
savagely at the wall of the car.

The Red Cross surgeon to whom the American went for information
dismissed the matter casually by merely tapping his forehead with his
index finger.

"Just one of those insane cases," he said.

Later in the day on better acquaintance the surgeon explained the matter
in this fashion:--

"The fellow was quartered in a village near Lille, doing sentry duty on
a house occupied by German officers. There was an uprising of citizens.
From across the way native franc-tireurs fired shots into the house,
killing one officer and wounding a second. Tracing the firing across
the street, the remaining officers entered a bakery-shop where they
found several men and a woman, all armed. They ordered the men to be
shot. The woman had in her hand a revolver with one of the cartridge
chambers empty. The German lieutenant saw that she was about to become
a mother. He then explained the gravity of her offense, told her that
she was practically guilty of murder, and took away her weapon. But
under the circumstances he ordered her released instead of being shot.
He turned his back and walked away about five paces. Suddenly the woman
snatched another revolver from behind the counter and fired point-blank.
As he fell, the officer called out to his orderly, 'Bayonet the woman.'

"The sentry did what he was ordered, but, you see, it has affected the
poor fellow's mind."

This story, along with a few others, I have picked out from hundreds of
atrocity tales which I heard during four months spent in England,
Belgium, Germany, and Holland. It will serve as an example, not only
because it has the earmarks of truth,--having been told in an offhand
way merely as an explanation of the private's insanity,--but because it
is typical of the kind of incident which in the telling is, nine times
out of ten, twisted into atro