Yet I did not hear one of them complain or
groan.
With that oxlike patience of the North-European peasant breed, which
seems accentuated in these Germans in time of war, they quietly endured
what was acute discomfort for any sound man to have to endure. In some
dim, dumb fashion of their own they seemed, each one of them, to
comprehend that in the vast organism of an army at war the individual
unit does not count. To himself he may be of prime importance and first
consideration, but in the general carrying out of the scheme he is a
mote, a molecule, a spore, a protoplasm--an infinitesimal, utterly
inconsequential thing to be sacrificed without thought. Thus we
diagnosed their mental poses. Along toward five o'clock a goodish
string of cars was added to our train, and into these additional cars
seven hundred French soldiers, who had been collected at Gembloux, were
loaded. With the Frenchmen as they marched under our window went,
perhaps, twenty civilian prisoners, including two priests and three or
four subdued little men who looked as though they might be civic
dignitaries of some small Belgian town.
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