Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/124

"You mean to say the war is not over—with the Russian beaten?" asked the Turkish staff officer.

"Your war? Yes. It is over. But our war is not! And you are going to fight for us, my friend and you are going to toe the mark and fight well. For—" he laughed unpleasantly, "remember our Prussian slogan—Discipline! Discipline!"

Mehmet el-Touati crept away, into the shadow of a horse-chestnut tree, to think. But he did not have to think long.

Only one fact stood out: the Russian was beaten; Islam was safe—and the house of the Osmanli.

Nothing else mattered.

The West front? Albania? Macedonia?

The French and British and Italians?

No, no! He shook his head. He knew nothing about them. They were not in his life, his world. Russia was beaten. Islam was safe, and he had done his duty, and now he must go home and look after his fields and his wife and his children. They had been neglected so long.

He must go soon. To-day. This very night. For here he was in the foot hills of his own country, where he knew the roads.

But—how?

He remembered the Kurds who had tried to desert who had been caught, courtmartialed, shot, by orders of—

Yes! By orders of the Prussian, the foreigner!

The Turkish staff officer would not care. He would argue that one man more or less in the company was not worth the trouble of halting the column, of searching the surrounding valleys and mountains with a fine-tooth comb.