Let us then beware, for it is not illogical to assume that some day the soldier may emerge from underneath the time-worn cloak of "duty" and come, like labor, capital and civilian to demand his "rights." It must not be unreasonable to conjecture that a soldier must have rights too, as well as duties. Certainly, a man forced against his instinct to kill has rights; perhaps not the rights of wages and hours, nor the rights of profits, not the right of untrammeled speech against his superiors, which in a military sense spells catastrophe. No, none of these; just a few simple rights—three of which would appear his incontestable duty to demand: one, that he be adequately supplied with the proper arms in sufficient quantities so that there be a maximum of speed attached to his "killing,"—secondly, that he be not betrayed by fifth-columnists who must, in wartime, be summarily dispatched, by imprisonment or execution, and lastly, of the primmest importance, that he receive a definite avowal by his government guaranteeing him once and for all time that this whole ghastly, horrible business of killing the Germans is at an end; that his son may know peace without having to kill for it.
—9—
