The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-10-10
6Contfnued.y

forefront Of battle. He had made his section of rifle pits chiefly along a line of deep, dry ditch that gave a means of intercommunieation. He had had the earth scattered over the ad- jacent field, and he had masked his preparations with tussocks of corn and poppy. The hostile advance came blind1y and unsuspicious1y across the fields below and would have been cruel ly handled indeed if some one away to the right had not opened fire too soon
 'It was queer thrill when these fellows came into sight, g he confesses, s'and not bit like maneuvers. They halted for time on the edge of the wood and then came forward in an open line. They kept walking nearer to us and not looking at us, but away to the right of us. Even when they began to be hit and their officers whis- ties woke them up, they didn't seem to see us. One or two halted to fire and then they all went back toward the wood again. They went slowly at first, looking round at us, then the shelter of the wood seemed to draw them and they trotted. I fired rather mechanically and missed, then fired again, and then I became earnest to hit something, made sure of my sight ing and aimed very carefully at blue back that was lodging about in the corn. At first couldn't satisfy my self and didn't shoot, his movements were so spasmodfc and uncertain, then think he came to a ditch or some such obstacle and halted for moment Got you I whispered and pulled the trigger.
 had the strangest sensations about that man. Tn the first instance, when felt that I, had hit him [ was ir- radiated with joy and pride.
 sent him spinning. He Jumped and threw up his arms. Then [ saw the corn tops waving and had glfmpses of his hspping about. Suddenly felt sick. I Iznadn't killed him.
 Tn some way he was disabled and smashed up and yet able to struggle about began to think.
 For nearly two hours that Prussian was agonizing in the corn. Either he was calling out or some one was shout ing to him.
 Then he jumped up He seemed to try and get up upon his feet with one last effort, and then he fell like a sack and lay still and never moved again.
 He had been unendurable, and believe some one had shot him dead. had been wanting to do so for some dme.''
 The enemy began sniping the rifle pits from shelters they made for them selves ia the woods below. A man was hit in the pit next to Barnet and began cursing and crying out in vio- lent rage. Barnet crawIed along the ditch to him and found him in great pain, covered with blood, frantic with indignation and with the half of his right hand smashed to a pulp. Look 1 and then extending 1t "D fooleryt Dd fooieryl My right hand. sir! My right hand!''s
 For some time Barnet could do noth- ing with him. The man was consumed by his tortured realization of the evil stiffness lof war, the realization which had come upon him in flash with the bullet that had destroyed his skill and use as an artificer forever He was looking at the yestiges with horror that made him impenetrabIe to any other idea. At last the poor wretch let Barnet tie up his bleeding stump and help him along the ditch that con ducted him deyiously out of range.
 When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for. water, and all day long the line of pits suffered great ly from thirst For food they had chocolate and bread.
 s.At first,'' he says, ''I was extraordi- narily excited by my baptism of fire. Then as the heat of the day came on I experienced an enormous tedium and discomfort. The flies became extreme 1y troublesome. and my little grave of a rife pit was invaded by ants. could not get up or move about, for | some one in the trees had got mark on me. I kept thinking of the dead Prussian down among the corn and of the bitter outcries of my own man. D-d foolery! It was d-d foolery. But who was to blame? How had we got to this2
 ssEarly in the afternoon an aeroplane tried to dtslodge us with dynamite bombs, but she was hit by bullets once or twice and suddenly dtved down over beyond the trees.
 ." From Holland to the Alps this day. I thought, there must be crouching and lying between half a million men, trying to inf1ict irreparable damage upon one another. The thing is idiotic to the pitch of impossibi1ity. It is a dream. Presently shall wake up.'
 '"Then the phrase changed itself in my mind Presently mankind will wake up.'
 q lay speculating just how many thousands of men there were among these hundreds of thousands, whose spirits were in rebellion against all these ancient traditions of flag and ena- pire. Weren't we, perhaps, already in the throes of the last crisis. in that darkest moment of a nightmares hor- TOT before the sleeper will endure no more of it-and wakes?
 q don't know how my specuiations ended think they were not so much ended as distracted by the distant thudding of the guns that were open ing fire at long range upon Namur."
 But as yet Barnet had seen no more than the mildest beginnings of mod