"By that time those shot on top of the heap began to slide into the river. Those not under fire scrambled down to the river and swam it--those who could swim; the others are in it yet. You can see them down there and wherever there is sand-bank or rock-ledge. But those who swam were the only ones that escaped us. That crowd was so panicky that it didn't have sense enough even to surrender. That's my theory.
"It was an awful sight. Do you think this war will end soon?"
In private life the narrator is a school-teacher in a little village in the Bavarian highlands.
Napoleon had a poor opinion of the hungry soldier. But it is not only the man-at-arms who travels on his belly--the nation at war does the same.
I have found that patriotism at a groaning table in a warm room, and with some other pleasant prospects added, is indeed a fine thing. The amateur strategist and politician is never in finer mettle than when his belt presses more or less upon a grateful stomach and when the mind has been exhilarated by a good bottle of wine and is then being tickled by a respectable Havana.
But I have also sat of nights--rainy nights at that--in the trenches and listened to what the men at the front had to say. They, too, were reasonably optimistic when the stomach was at peace. Of course, these men had their cares. Most of them were married and had in the past supported their families with the proceeds of their labor. Now the governments were feeding these families--after a fashion. What that fashion was the men came to hear in letters from home. It made them dissatisfied and often angry.
I sat one night in the bombproof of an advanced position on the Sveta Maria, near Tolmein. My host was an Austrian captain whose ancestry had come from Scotland. A certain Banfield had thought it well to enter the Austro-Hungarian naval service many years ago, and the captain was one of his descendants.
Captain Banfield was as "sore" as the proverbial wet hen. He hadn't been home in some fourteen months, and at home things were not well. His wife was having a hard time of it trying to keep the kiddies alive, while the good Scotchman was keeping vigil on the Isonzo.
That Scotchman, by the way, had a reputation in the Austrian army for being a terrible _Draufgänger_, which means that when occasion came he was rather hard on the Italians. He would have been just as ruthless with the profiteers had he been able to get at them. Most uncomplimentary things were said by him of the food sharks and the government which did not lay them low.