Page:Back From Hell, by Samuel Cranston Benson.djvu/18

2 Others were going, and made no bones about saying so, because they were natural born soldiers of fortune and were inclined to go anywhere that action and excitement were likely to be found. A few were to be mere onlookers who were crossing the sea as students of a great world movement, who, from an economic or social point of view, would tabulate in a cold and matter-of-course way, the facts which they observed and the conclusions to which they came.

I belonged to neither of these classes. I was an innocent idealist, though soon, alas, to be disillusioned. I had resigned a comfortable pastorate in order to go over and, as I conceived of it, relieve the pain and soothe the fevered brow of those who were in suffering, irrespective of whether they were Allies or Germans, and thus help usher in a world Utopia.

I had always taken myself rather too seriously at home, and thought I was a broad-visioned person whose universality of mind elevated me to a position where I could see beyond provincial boundary lines, and overlook such things as race and creed and national ideals, thinking of all men as made in the image of God, and all destined for one great goal which was the Brotherhood