Page:The Best continental short stories of and the yearbook of the continental short story 1924-25.pdf/76



N war-time one has to accept a very mixed and dubious society, for there is no way of picking and choosing. You are thrown pellmell among old, wornout clothes and messmates, and you must do your best with all of them. You can cut up the old clothes and use them over again, but as for the comrades, you must trim yourself to fit them. And usually in so doing you must use large shears. The soldiers’ shoes are big, rather than small, and the same is often true of the comradely hearts which one encounters, though this fact is not always perceived. As you grow accustomed to your new life, you are quite willing to borrow a louse now and then, to be returned with interest. Grief is handed about from one man to another, as an ardent woman of the camp-fire allows herself to be infested with insects by any one, without a protest. Should a choice and fine Sunday-school word be let fall in the conversation, this pearl always drops before some swine who rolls it about in his mouth with joy, merely because it is a Sunday-school word. When it ceases to be bandied about, every one feels, as it were, the pricking of a thorn under his nails or in his heart, and sorrow gnaws again at every soul. It isn’t our fault, old fellow, but you see we can hardly celebrate Sundays very well. Sundays and everything that goes with them, and we well know why.

I have to smile when I chance to remember one of my war comrades. It isn’t you, Pancrace, forest warden of the village near Kladno—you, who so beautifully proved in your own person the truth that a forest warden is best made from a poacher! Nor am I thinking of other comrades, who equally, incarnated many other truths. The comrade I mean incarnated a sort of deception, or lie, which was very agreeable, and which did us all much good. I profess—even if the profession count against me