“French gunners in a wood near by ran hotfoot to see each band of prisoners pass, but our men with British phlegm stayed where they stood, and eyed the foe with casual glance. The passing wounded drew no expression of pity from the onlookers, nor did the fate of the ingoing tide even raise a questioning expression on their faces. This was the last spot where selfishness still reigned supreme――the fringe of the battle. Death and danger were not sufficiently close to draw out the best in man; he behaved as he did in civil life――each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
“The men who marched up the endless ribbon to the front looked just like other men, and anxiety for their own safety left no trace in their expression. They might have been the crowd that streams through the factory gates in the early morning. The outgoing men were different. They hastened by and looked neither to the left nor right. They felt that fate had been too good to them and that it might change its mind and rend them if they loitered by the way. They had reached the fringe where the ‘Ego’ was whispering in their ears with insistent voice. They were alive; the others――they might be dead――what matter? They were alive.
“The wounded stared in front of them, except those in pain, and the prisoners looked cowed and miserable. The escorts walked with jaunty air, rifle slung, bayonets fixed, and exchanged jokes with all who would pay attention. The feeling of victory was still in their veins, for the slouching prisoners spurred their pride of race; were they not the symbol of all their friends ‘up there’ had done?
“The stretcher-bearers, intent on their work, passed the fringe of selfishness untouched. The bond of pain and suffering held them fast in unselfishness until the moment when they delivered their charge to the clearing-station in the rear. While other men hurried from the battlefield, these slowly and with aching arms and legs carried their burdens carefully. Human suffering must touch some special chord of self-sacrifice in man. Duty, discipline, and other self-taught virtues would never produce that careful studied plod of the stretcher-bearer under heavy shell-fire, or those deliberate halts to attend to their patients’ needs.