Otto smiled his good-natured smile.
"Do you want to fight against France and England?" Paul insisted.
"It isn't me. I have no quarrel with them."
"Then why do you go back to train?"
"Because my country commands me. Was kann ich dafür?"
"You can just plain refuse," Paul retorted. "Das kannst du dafür!"
"Then my poor old father would have to pay a fine to the authorities, and I would be a disgrace to him."
"I should think he'd rather pay a fine than have you turned into a slave. I wouldn't let any country boss me about!"
"You would do as all the others did."
"Not unless I felt like it! I'd run away. Why, you ran away yourself, from school. How could you do that, if you're so fussy about obeying authorities?"
"Running away from school is different. It affects only oneself. Running away from military service affects the country."
"Do you mean to say you're willing to be bullied by your country just because it may need you to help kill people of a country which it thinks is bad, but which isn't bad at all? I suppose you would have stayed at school and let the teachers bully you, had the fatherland decided its honour could be saved only if all the kids in Germany learned square root and decimals!"
Otto was unmoved by this outpour.
"Besides," continued Paul severely, "fighting does no earthly good. Liars and thieves can win fights, if they're strong enough, and they usually are." He was thinking bitterly of frays behind the schoolhouse in Hale's Turning. "And it's liars and thieves who prate about honour. I don't believe honest people worry about theirs."
He recalled an occasion when Skinny Wiggins had
