“Of course—­yes—­but we must look at facts—­you’ve got to think about the object, old chap.”

“The object?  To be winners in this war,” the pillar-man insisted, “isn’t that an object?”

Two there were who replied together, “No!”

* * * * * *

At this moment there was a dull noise; cries broke out around us, and we shuddered.  A length of earth had detached itself from the hillock on which—­after a fashion—­we were leaning back, and had completely exhumed in the middle of us a sitting corpse, with its legs out full length.  The collapse burst a pool that had gathered on the top of the mound, and the water spread like a cascade over the body and laved it as we looked.

Some one cried, “His face is all black!”

“What is that face?” gasped a voice.

Those who were able drew near in a circle, like frogs.  We could not gaze upon the head that showed in low relief upon the trench-wall that the landslide had laid bare.  “His face?  It isn’t his face!” In place of the face we found the hair, and then we saw that the corpse which had seemed to be sitting was broken, and folded the wrong way.  In dreadful silence we looked on the vertical back of the dislocated dead, upon the hanging arms, backward curved, and the two outstretched legs that rested on the sinking soil by the points of the toes.  Then the discussion began again, revived by this fearful sleeper.  As though the corpse was listening they clamored—­“No!  To win isn’t the object.  It isn’t those others we’ve got to get at—­it’s war.”

“Can’t you see that we’ve got to finish with war?  If we’ve got to begin again some day, all that’s been done is no good.  Look at it there!—­and it would be in vain.  It would be two or three years or more of wasted catastrophe.”

* * * * * *

“Ah, my boy, if all we’ve gone through wasn’t the end of this great calamity!  I value my life; I’ve got my wife, my family, my home around them; I’ve got schemes for my life afterwards, mind you.  Well, all the same, if this wasn’t the end of it, I’d rather die.”

“I’m going to die.”  The echo came at that moment exactly from Paradis’ neighbor, who no doubt had examined the wound in his belly.  “I’m sorry on account of my children.”

“It’s on account of my children that I’m not sorry,” came a murmur from somewhere else.  “I’m dying, so I know what I’m saying, and I say to myself, ‘They’ll have peace.’”

“Perhaps I shan’t die,” said another, with a quiver of hope that he could not restrain even in the presence of the doomed, “but I shall suffer.  Well, I say, ‘more’s the pity,’ and I even say ’that’s all right’; and I shall know how to stick more suffering if I know it’s for something.”

“Then we’ll have to go on fighting after the war?”

“Yes, p’raps—­”

“You want more of it, do you?”

“Yes, because I want no more of it,” the voice grunted.  “And p’raps it’ll not be foreigners that we’ve got to fight?”