“That’s not the right thing to say!” cries another.  “It isn’t enough.  There’ll be no more war when the spirit of war is defeated.”  The roaring of the wind half smothered his words, so he lifted his head and repeated them.

“Germany and militarism”—­some one in his anger precipitately cut in—­“they’re the same thing.  They wanted the war and they’d planned it beforehand.  They are militarism.”

“Militarism—­” a soldier began again.

“What is it?” some one asked.

“It’s—­it’s brute force that’s ready prepared, and that lets fly suddenly, any minute.”

“Yes.  To-day militarism is called Germany.”

“Yes, but what will it be called to-morrow?”

“I don’t know,” said a voice serious as a prophet’s.

“If the spirit of war isn’t killed, you’ll have struggle all through the ages.”

“We must—­one’s got to—­”

“We must fight!” gurgled the hoarse voice of a man who had lain stiff in the devouring mud ever since our awakening; “we’ve got to!” His body turned heavily over.  “We’ve got to give all we have, our strength and our skins and our hearts, all our life and what pleasures are left us.  The life of prisoners as we are, we’ve got to take it in both hands.  You’ve got to endure everything, even injustice—­and that’s the king that’s reigning now—­and the shameful and disgusting sights we see, so as to come out on top, and win.  But if we’ve got to make such a sacrifice,” adds the shapeless man, turning over again, “it’s because we’re fighting for progress, not for a country; against error, not against a country.”

“War must be killed,” said the first speaker, “war must be killed in the belly of Germany!”

“Anyway,” said one of those who sat enrooted there like a sort of shrub, “anyway, we’re beginning to understand why we’ve got to march away.”

“All the same,” grumbled the squatting chasseur in his turn, “there are some that fight with quite another idea than that in their heads.  I’ve seen some of ’em, young men, who said, ’To hell with humanitarian ideas’; what mattered to them was nationality and nothing else, and the war was a question of fatherlands—­let every man make a shine about his own.  They were fighting, those chaps, and they were fighting well.”

“They’re young, the lads you’re talking about; they’re young, and we must excuse ’em.”

“You can do a thing well without knowing what you are doing.”

“Men are mad, that’s true.  You’ll never say that often enough.”

“The Jingoes—­they’re vermin,” growled a shadow.

Several times they repeated, as though feeling their way, “War must be killed; war itself.”

“That’s all silly talk.  What diff does it make whether you think this or that?  We’ve got to be winners, that’s all.”

But the others had begun to cast about.  They wanted to know and to see farther than to-day.  They throbbed with the effort to beget in themselves some light of wisdom and of will.  Some sparse convictions whirled in their minds, and jumbled scraps of creeds issued from their lips.