Indeed for
an immediate illustration of the products of the business toward which
he was hastening I might have taken him by the arm and led him across
two sets of tracks and shown him men in the prime of life who were
hatcheled like flax, and mauled like blocks, and riddled like sieves,
and macerated out of the living image of their Maker.
But I did none of these things. He had a picture of something uplifting
and splendid before his eyes. He wanted to fight, or he thought he did,
which came to the same thing.
So what I did was to take down his name and promise to send him a
completed copy of his picture in the care of his regiment and brigade;
and the last I saw of him he was half out of a car window waving good-by
to us and wishing us auf wiedersehen as he was borne away to his
ordained place.
As we rode back through the town of Maubeuge in the dusk, the company
which had sung O Strassburg in the Franco-German beer shop at the prow
of the corner where the three streets met were just marching away.
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