At first I was at some pains to explain to each separate man what really occurred.  I pulled out my rough map, all thumb-marked and dirtied with brick chips and the soil of the trenches, and showed stage by stage how the drama unrolled.  It was no good.  Poor me! nobody quite understood.  Some thought possibly that I was a glib liar; others did not even trouble to think anything.  How much they understood!  They had not the background, the atmosphere, the long weeks which were necessary to teach even us ourselves.  They had not tasted the poison and did not yet suspect its existence.  So I gradually desisted.  Now I say nothing, never a word.  I listen and understand how history is made.  It is best never to explain or argue if you thoroughly understand.  Rhetoric is only the amplification of something long understood in one’s heart of hearts.

I am, therefore, tired of it all, inexpressibly tired.  I wish to escape from my hospital, to go away to some clean land where they understand so little of such things that their indifference will in the end, perhaps, convince me and make me forget.

Yet can one ever forget?

XVI

THE END

November, 1900.

* * * * *

Another month, and I have made up my mind quite suddenly.  I have finished with it—­at least, in outward form.  After waiting a couple of weeks and wondering what I should do, a last argument brought it about—­an argument with a German which ended by enraging me to an impossible point and making me challenge him to anything he liked.  That showed me that my last safe moment had arrived.

He was a youngish officer sent from the Field-Marshal’s staff to discuss some diplomatic-military details with my chief.  The business part was soon over, for there was really little to decide, and then the man fell to talking about what should be done.  He said that were there not so much rivalry and jealousy, and could Waldersee only act as he wished, they would have proper punitive expeditions which would shoot all the headmen of every village for hundreds of miles, and make such an example of everybody that the memory would endure for generations in every district where there had been Boxers.  The officer was eloquent because he had only just arrived, and understood nothing—­absolutely nothing.  For some reason our stars crossed and I hated him immediately.  So I waited until he had finished so that I could begin.  Then I began.

I cannot even remember all I said, for I was greatly enraged by the brutality of the man’s ideas, but I treated him as he had never been treated before.  As I poured out my lava stream and he slowly understood what I meant, he first became very red, and then very pale, and finally he stood up.  I took advantage of that action, and since we all still are armed, I told him he could have satisfaction, at once if he wished, and at any number of paces he chose to name.