er when I am killed? I left her with the concierge, who promised to
take care of her--not for money, you understand, because I had none
to give. My little girl will never see me again, and I shall never see her
grow into a woman. Because I am going to be killed. Perhaps in a
day or two there will be no more life for me. This hand of mine--you
see I can grasp things with it, move it this way and that, shake hands
with you--camarade!--salute the spirit of France with it--comme ca!
But tomorrow or the next day it will be quite still. A dead thing--like my
dead body. It is queer. Here I sit talking to you alive. But to-morrow or
the next day my corpse will lie out on the battlefield, like a bit of
earth. I can see that corpse of mine, with its white face and staring eyes.
Ugh! it is a dirty sight--a man's corpse. Here in my heart something
tells me that I shall be killed quite soon, perhaps at the first shot. But
do you know I shall not be sorry to die. I shall be glad, Monsieur! And
why glad, you ask? Because I love France and hate the Germans
who have put this war on to us. I am going to fight--I, a Socialist and a
syndicalist--so that we shall make an end of war, so that the little ones
of France shall sleep in peace, and the women go without fear. This
war will have to be the last war. It is a war of Justice against
Injustice. When they have finished this time the people will have no
more of it. We who go out to die shall be remembered because we
gave the world peace. That will be our reward, though we shall know
nothing of it but lie rotting in the earth--dead! It is sad that to-morrow,
or the next day, I shall be dead. I see my corpse there-----"

He saw his corpse again, and wept a little at the sight of it.

A neurotic type--a poor weed of life who had been reared in the dark
lairs of civilization. Yet I had no contempt for him as he gibbered with
self-pity. The tragedy of the future of civilization was in the soul of
that pallid, sharp-featured, ill-nourished man who had lived in misery
within the glitter of a rich city and who was now being taken to his
death--I feel sure he died in the trenches even though no bullet may
have reached him--at the command of great powers who knew
nothing of this poor ant. What did his individual life matter? ... I stared
into the soul of a soldier of France and wondered at the things I saw
in it--at the spiritual faith which made a patriot of that apache.

19

There was a cha