left side of his bed. Then came the command: “Change at Löhne!” and like lightning everyone scrambled under the bed to the opposite side. We practised this for a whole hour———
Meanwhile the German aeroplane has been shot down. Like a comet it bursts into a streamer of smoke and falls headlong. Kropp has lost the bottle of beer. Disgruntled he counts out the money from his wallet.
“Surely Himmelstoss was a very different fellow as a postman,” say I, after Albert’s disappointment has subsided. “Then how does it come that he’s such a bully as a drill-sergeant?”
The question revives Kropp, more particularly as he hears there’s no more beer in the canteen. “It’s not only Himmelstoss, there are lots of them. As sure as they get a stripe or a star they become different men, just as though they’d swallowed concrete.”
“That’s the uniform,” I suggest.
“Roughly speaking it is,” says Kat, and prepares for a long speech; “but the root of the matter lies elsewhere. For instance, if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he’ll snap at it, it’s his nature. And if you give a man a little bit of authority he behaves
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