"We have withdrawn a portion of our force today," continued the general,
"in order to rectify our line. Our army had advanced too far. Tomorrow
we resume our march on Paris."
John felt that it was an extraordinary statement for an old man, one of
such high rank, the commander of perhaps a quarter of a million
soldiers, to be making to him, a young American, but he held his peace,
awaiting what lay behind it all.
"Now you are a captive," continued the general, "you will be sent to a
prison, and you will be held there until the end of the war. You will
necessarily suffer much. We cannot help it. Yet you might be sent to
your own country. Americans and Germans are not enemies. I know from
Captain von Boehlen who took you that you have been in an aeroplane with
a Frenchman. Some account of what you saw from space might help your
departure for America."
And so that was it! Now the prisoner's eye steadily confronted that of
the old general.
"Your Highness," he said, as he thought that the old man might be a
prince as well as a general, "you have read the history of the great
civil war in my country, have you not?"
"It was a part of my military duty to study it. It was a long and
desperate struggle with many great battles, but what has it to do with
the present?"
"Did you ever hear of any traitor on either side, North or South, in
that struggle?"
The deep red veins in the old general's face stood out, but he gave no
other sign.
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