nscious of that man in the hole staring down the
length of his rifle, and listening intently for any sound which would
betray an enemy. Every night he shot two or three men, perfectly
patient in his long cold vigil if he could have that "luck." Then at dawn
he would crawl back again, bringing a helmet or two with him, a
cartridge belt or some other trophy as a sign of his success.

One night he shot a man who had stumbled quite close to his pit, and
some great instinct of pity for his victim stirred in him, so that he
risked a double journey over the open ground to fetch a spade with
which he buried the man. But soon afterwards he added to his "bag"
of human life. In his own trench he spoke very little and always
seemed to be waiting for the hour when he could crawl out again like
a Red Indian in search of scalps. He was the primitive man, living like
one of his ancestors of the Stone Age, except for the fire-stick with
which he was armed and the knowledge of the arts and beauties of
modern life in his hunter's head. For he was not a French Canadian
from the backwoods, or an Alpine chasseur from lonely mountains,
but a well-known lawyer from a French provincial town, with the blood
and education of a gentleman. As a queer character this man is worth
remembering by those who study the psychology of war, but he is not
typical of the soldiers of France, who in the mass have no blood-lust,
and hate butchering their fellow beings, except in their moments of
mad excitement, made up of fear as well as of rage, when to the
shout of "En avant!" they leap out of the trenches and charge a body
of Germans, stabbing and slashing with their bayonets, clubbing men
to death with the butt-ends of their rifles, and for a few minutes of
devilish intoxication, with the smell of blood in their nostrils, and with
bloodshot eyes, rejoicing in slaughter.

"We did not listen to the cries of surrender or to the beseeching
plaints of the wounded," said a French soldier, describing one of
these scenes. "We had no use for prisoners and on both sides there
was no quarter given in this Argonne wood. Better than fixed
bayonets was an unfixed bayonet grasped as a dagger. Better than
any bayonet was a bit of iron or a broken gun-stock, or a sharp knife.
In that hand-to-hand fighting there was no shooting but only the
struggling of interlaced bodies, with fists and claws grabbing for each
other's throats. I saw men use teeth and bite their enemy to deat