The Revolution
But the nearer to the border the train came which was bringing us home, the more restless each man became. All the towns moved past which we had ridden through, two years before, as young soldiers: Brussels, Louvain, Liège; and finally we thought we recognized the first German house by its high gables and its handsome shutters.
The Fatherland!
In October 1914 we had been aflame with wild enthusiasm when we crossed the border; now stillness and emotion reigned. We were all happy that Fate allowed us to see once more what we were defending so fiercely with our lives; and each of us was almost ashamed to let anyone look him in the eye.
Almost on the anniversary of my departure I arrived in the hospital at Beelitz near Berlin.
What a transformation! From the mud of the Battle of the Somme into the white beds of this marvelous structure! At first one hardly dared lie on them.
But unfortunately this world was new in other respects also.
The spirit of the army at the front seemed not to dwell here. For the first time I heard a thing as yet unknown at the front: someone boasting of his own cowardice. One did indeed hear cursing and grumbling at the front, but never to encourage dereliction in duty, let alone to glorify the coward. No: the coward was a coward still, and nothing more; and he was treated with a contempt as universal as the admiration that was felt for a true hero. But here in the hospital, conditions already were partly almost the reverse: the most unprincipled trouble-seekers took the floor, and tried with every resource of their sorry eloquence to make the ideas of the decent soldier ridiculous and the coward’s lack of character a model.
A few contemptible fellows in particular set the tone. One of them boasted that he had stuck his own hand into the barbed wire in order to get into the hospital; despite this ridiculous injury he seemed to have been here an endless length of time, and in fact it was only by a dodge that he had got into the transport train for Germany at all. This poisonous fellow went so far as to ex-
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