Achmed Abdullah

“ War is not a sport, meine Herren Offiziere. War is a grim business. The rules of sport do not apply to it. Win! That's what the War Lord demands of you. Nothing else!"
Leave from the unceasing grind of duty was seldom given, and Tom was circumspect when he had an hour or two for himself. His old range breeding stood him in good stead, his instinct, his second sight of the man used to the noises and furtive trails of the open prairie. Thus he knew that, whenever he was away from barracks, he was being shadowed. ”

“ Hectic whispers rose at times from groups of officers—whispers that were yearning, again pleading, again, with ferocious suddenness, stabbing to a savage, insupportable note, like the expectant, hysterical cries of worshipers at a bloody shrine about to behold the pomp of some dreadful, mysterious ceremonial. ”

“ And, later on, thinking about the chain of events, it would strike him as strange, as portentous, as fitting of the new era, that it was a bit of casual, loose American slang, of that typically transatlantic slang which will ever remain an unfathomable secret to the uninitiated, that saved the situation, that, in the final reckoning, perhaps saved the whole world from the iron heel, the soulless efficiency, the blood-stained brutality of Kaiserism, and Prussianism, and Junkerism—from the Trinity of Crime. ”