Men in War | Page 8

who
has split open other men's skulls and shot and bayoneted human beings.
Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I didn't want to believe that
they could stand it like that. 'They're only pretending,' I thought.
'They're just restraining themselves. But when the first whistle blows,
they'll begin to scream and tear us out of the train, and rescue us.' Once
they had the chance to protect us, but all they cared about was being in
style--nothing else in the world but just being in style."
He sank down on the bench again and sat as though he were all broken
up. His body was shaken by a low weeping, and his head rolled to and
fro on his panting chest. A little circle of people had gathered behind
his back. The old landsturm corporal was standing beside the physician
with four sentries ready to intervene at a moment's notice. All the
windows in the officers' wing had lighted up, and scantily clad figures
leaned out, looking down into the garden curiously.
The sick man eagerly scrutinized the indifferent faces around him. He
was exhausted.
His hoarse throat no longer gave forth a sound. His hand reached out
for help to the Philosopher, who stood beside him, all upset.
The physician felt the right moment had come to lead him away.
"Come, Lieutenant, let's go to sleep," he said with a clumsy affectation
of geniality. "That's the way women are once for all, and there's
nothing to be done about it."
The physician wanted to go on talking and in conversing lure the sick
man into the house unawares. But the very next sentence remained
sticking in his throat, and he stopped short in amazement. The limp

wobbling skeleton that only a moment before had sat there as in a faint
and let himself be raised up by the physician and the Philosopher,
suddenly jumped up with a jerk, and tore his arms away so violently
that the two men who were about to assist him were sent tumbling up
against the others. He bent over with crooked knees, staggering like a
man carrying a heavy load on his back. His veins swelled, and he
panted with fury:
"That's the way women are once for all, are they? Since when, eh?
Have you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of prime
ministers, and set fire to museums, and let themselves be chained to
lamp-posts for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you
hear? But for the sake of their men? No. Not one sound. Not one single
outcry!"
He stopped to take breath, overcome by a wild suffocating despair.
Then he pulled himself together once more and with difficulty
suppressing the sobs, which kept bringing a lump into his throat, he
screamed in deepest misery like a hunted animal:
"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of a train for
the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them boxed the ears of a
prime minister or tied herself to a railroad track for us? There wasn't
one that had to be torn away. Not one fought for us or defended us. Not
one moved a little finger for us in the whole wide world! They drove us
out! They gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent
us to murder, they sent us to die--for their vanity. Are you going to
defend them? No! They must be pulled out! Pulled out like weeds, by
the roots! Four of you together must pull the way we had to do with
Dill. Four of you together! Then she'll have to come out. Are you the
doctor? There! Do it to my head. I don't want a wife! Pull--pull her
out!"
He flung out his arm and his fist came down like a hammer on his own
skull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growth of
hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful torn out
by the roots, and howled with pain.

The doctor gave a sign, and the next moment the four sentries were on
him, panting. He screamed, gnashed his teeth, beat about him, kicked
himself free, shook off his assailants like burrs. It was not until the old
corporal and the doctor came to their assistance that they succeeded in
dragging him into the house.
As soon as he was gone the people left the garden. The last to go were
the Mussulman and the Philosopher. The Mussulman stopped at the
door, and in the light of the lantern looked gravely down at his leg,
which, in its plaster cast, hung like a dead thing between his two
crutches.
"Do