The Manchester journal. [volume] (Manchester, Vt.) 1861-current, 1917-09-13

fifff f1ttAM1h u tfftbf N'1Nt ip's" VI
that battle which | won't repeot be
cause lis all been in the paper. How
do you expect men 10 40 back TO that
do you know what happens To you
when you live for twenty thirty days
like that? You 90 mad. Yes, that's
what happens 10 you--that's what's
the trouble with mel know ! sound
wild. | am Wild can't stand any
morc--it's more than flesh and blood
can endure 70 20 back into that! Why
don't the American get here, II they
are going to! Oh yes. ] know they
can't any sooner--but why didn't they
get in, before! Oh yes, know why.
| know--but when you are mad you
can't stop TO reason. We look at it
this way When we're not mad, from
having been too many days under fire
we say, as we talk it over-'There
are the English--they've done splen-
didly--they've taken two years, it is
true. to get they army really in shape
but they didn't have anything to be-
gin with--they're fne--all that we
could expect. But all the same, dur
ing the two years, Frenchmen were
dying like flies--just watering the
whole North with blood--yes, I've
seen brook run red just like the silly
poems that nobody believed. And the
Acknowledgements he and !
should get to quarreling. OF course
you can't jump right in and decide
which is to blame, IL you don't know
much about he beginning. You have
TO stand off and watch, and see which
fights fair, and all the rest-but
while you are deciding all France is
dying. BY the time the weight OF the
defense is taken off France there won't
be any Frenchmen left alive in France
and here she is with all those for
eigners overrunning her! Do you sup
pose they are going to leave after the
war? Not much. All these Algerians
and Senegals and Annamites-not to
speak of the Belgians and English and
Americans - there won't be any
Frenchmen left alive, and France will
be populated by foreigners-thafs
what we have to look forward to for
all the reward of our blood. They
keep promising help, but they don't
bring it. We have to go back and go
back! | tell you, Name Fisher, three
years is too long time! No man can
stand three years of war! 1t makes
you into somebody else-you've died
SO many times you're like a walking
corpse. Isn't that just how you feel!'
he appealed to his companion, who
said impassively, mo, damn you, that
isn't bit how feel. | just say to
myself it's war and that's the way
war is, and don't try to make anything
out of it the way you do. That's silly!
You just have to stick it out. Under
standing it, hasn't anything to do with
it."
The first one went off on another
track-you'll have noticed of course
how wild and incoherent his talk is.
ats the capitalists, that's what it is,
they saw that the people--the prolet-
ariat--that's me with thump of his
fist on his chest) had begun to see too
clearly how things were going and so
they stirred up this hornets nest to
blind everybody-for in war even
more than in peace land that's saying
good dean it's the proletariat that
bears the burdens. Who do you think
is in the trenches now--is the bourge-
ois class? NO! It's the laboring
class. One by one, the bourgeois
have slipped out of it, got themselves
the fat jobs at the rear, work in hos
pitals-anything but to stay out in
the front-line trenches with US poor
rats of working-people? Isn't that
so ?" he appealed TO his companion,
who answered again very calmly-Qt
was extraordinary how they didn't
seem to mind differing diametrically
from each other. suppose they had
the long habit of arguing together.)
"No, it's not so! In my escouade
there are as many bourgeois as labor
ing men" The rfist man never paid
the least attention to these brief de-
malls Of everything he was saying and
seemed TO consider them as little as
street orators Of his type do in peace
times when they street-corner-orate.
"It's the proletariat that always
pays-isn't it so, Ma'ame Fisher!
Peace or war, old-time or new, it's
always the poor who pay all the debts! I!
And they're doing it TO such tune
now in France that there won't be any
left, when the war is over--oh, it's got
to stop. There's no use talking about
it--and it will. too, one Of these days
who cares how il stops. Life--any
sort OF life--is better than anything
else" At this the other soldier said,