By R.T.O.'s and A.M.L.O.'s and camp commandments and town
majors and staff pups men were bullied and bundled about, not like
human beings, but like dumb beasts, and in a thousand ways injustice,
petty tyranny, hard work, degrading punishments for trivial offenses,
struck at their souls and made the name of personal liberty a mockery.
From their own individuality they argued to broader issues. Was this
war for liberty? Were the masses of men on either side fighting with
free will as free men? Those Germans--were they not under discipline,
each man of them, forced to fight whether they liked it or not?
Compelled to go forward to sacrifice, with machine-guns behind them to
shoot them down if they revolted against their slave-drivers? What
liberty had they to follow their conscience or their judgment--"
Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die"--like all soldiers
in all armies. Was it not rather that the masses of men engaged in
slaughter were serving the purpose of powers above them, rival powers,
greedy for one another's markets, covetous of one another's wealth,
and callous of the lives of humble men? Surely if the leaders of the
warring nations were put together for even a week in some such place
as Hooge, or the Hohenzollern redoubt, afflicted by the usual
harassing fire, poison-gas, mine explosions, lice, rats, and the
stench of rotting corpses, with the certainty of death or
dismemberment at the week-end, they would settle the business and come
to terms before the week was out.
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