"These butchers, you say, are Germans?" asked Oro of me.
"Yes," I answered, sick with horror, for though I was in the mind and not in the body, I could feel as the mind does.Had Ibeen in the body also, I should have fainted.
"Then we need not waste time in visiting their country.It is enough; let us go on."We passed out into the open land and came to a village.It was in the occupation of German cavalry.Two of them held a little girl of nine or ten, one by her body, the other by her right hand.An officer stood between them with a drawn sword fronting the terrified child.He was a horrible, coarse-faced man who looked to me as though he had been drinking.
"I'll teach the young devil to show us the wrong road and let those French swine escape," he shouted, and struck with the sword.The girl's right hand fell to the ground.
"War as practised by the Germans!" remarked Oro.Then he stepped, or seemed to step up to the man and whispered, or seemed to whisper, in his ear.
I do not know what tongue or what spirit speech he used, or what he said, but the bloated-faced brute turned pale.Yes, he drew sick with fear.
"I think there are spirits in this place," he said with a German oath."I could have sworn that something told me that Iwas going to die.Mount!"
The Uhlans mounted and began to ride away.
"Watch," said Oro.
As he spoke out of a dark cloud appeared an aeroplane.Its pilot saw the band of Germans beneath and dropped a bomb.The aim was good, for the missile exploded in the midst of them, causing a great cloud of dust from which arose the screams of men and horses.
"Come and see," said Oro.
We were there.Out of the cloud of dust appeared one man galloping furiously.He was a young fellow who, as I noted, had turned his head away and hidden his eyes with his hand when the horror was done yonder.All the others were dead except the officer who had worked the deed.He was still living, but both his hands and one of his feet had been blown away.Presently he died, screaming to God for mercy.
We passed on and came to a barn with wide doors that swung a little in the wind, causing the rusted hinges to scream like a creature in pain.On each of these doors hung a dead man crucified.The hat of one of them lay upon the ground, and I knew from the shape of it that he was a Colonial soldier.
"Did you not tell me," said Oro after surveying them, "that these Germans are of your Christian faith?""Yes; and the Name of God is always on their ruler's lips.""Ah!" he said, "I am glad that I worship Fate.Bastin the priest need trouble me no more.""There is something behind Fate," I said, quoting Bastin himself.
"Perhaps.So indeed I have always held, but after much study Icannot understand the manner of its working.Fate is enough for me."We went on and came to a flat country that was lined with ditches, all of them full of men, Germans on one side, English and French upon the other.A terrible bombardment shook the earth, the shells raining upon the ditches.Presently that from the English guns ceased and out of the trenches in front of them thousands of men were vomited, who ran forward through a hail of fire in which scores and hundreds fell, across an open piece of ground that was pitted with shell craters.They came to barbed wire defenses, or what remained of them, cut the wire with nippers and pulled up the posts.Then through the gaps they surged in, shouting and hurling hand grenades.They reached the German trenches, they leapt into them and from those holes arose a hellish din.Pistols were fired and everywhere bayonets flashed.
Behind them rushed a horde of little, dark-skinned men, Indians who carried great knives in their hands.Those leapt over the first trench and running on with wild yells, dived into the second, those who were left of them, and there began hacking with their knives at the defenders and the soldiers who worked the spitting maxim guns.In twenty minutes it was over; those lines of trenches were taken, and once more from either side the guns began to boom.
"War again," said Oro, "clean, honest war, such as the god Icall Fate decrees for man.I have seen enough.Now I would visit those whom you call Turks.I understand they have another worship and perhaps they are nobler than these Christians."We came to a hilly country which I recognised as Armenia, for once I travelled there, and stopped on an seashore.Here were the Turks in thousands.They were engaged in driving before them mobs of men, women and children in countless numbers.On and on they drove them till they reached the shore.There they massacred them with bayonets, with bullets, or by drowning.I remember a dreadful scene of a poor woman standing up to her waist in the water.Three children were clinging to her--but I cannot go on, really I cannot go on.In the end a Turk waded out and bayoneted her while she strove to protect the last living child with her poor body whence it sprang.
"These, I understand," said Oro, pointing to the Turkish soldiers, "worship a prophet who they say is the voice of God.""Yes," I answered, "and therefore they massacre these who are Christians because they worship God without a prophet.""And what do the Christians massacre each other for?""Power and the wealth and territories that are power.That is, the King of the Germans wishes to rule the world, but the other Nations do not desire his dominion.Therefore they fight for Liberty and Justice.""As it was, so it is and shall be," remarked Oro, "only with this difference.In the old world some were wise, but here--" and he stopped, his eyes fixed upon the Armenian woman struggling in her death agony while the murderer drowned her child, then added:
"Let us go."
Our road ran across the sea.On it we saw a ship so large that it attracted Oro's attention, and for once he expressed astonishment.