WATCHFUL WAITING IN CAMP.
"THIS thing is getting some monotonous, Bob, and there's no use denying it!"
"None of the boys in camp seem to like it a whit better than you do, Sid, for a fact. I hear complaints all around about the inaction."
"We're still in Uncle Sam's service, though the job we were mustered in for—guarding the border while Pershing and his Regulars started on that wild goose chase down into Mexico, to round up Villa and his crowd—was long ago finished, and our regiment ordered back to Virginia."
"Just as you say, Sid, the Government decided not to muster us out. By turns most of us have been allowed brief furloughs, so as to run over and say 'howdye' to our home folks. We had to show up again in camp, though, when our time expired; and here we are still, doing a grinding duty."
"It's watchful waiting, all right, Bob. I wish they'd either turn us loose or else drum up something of account to do. We certainly had enough of this tent life down on the Rio Grande border."
"Excuse my laughing, Sid, but I plainly see that trip of ours across the ocean has spoiled you. After participating in those thrilling happenings along the Italian front near Trieste, in Austria, things that are just ordinary don't count for much with you nowadays."
The stout young fellow answering to the name of Sid, and who like his taller companion was dressed in a well-seasoned suit of khaki such as all Uncle Sam's army boys wear in these later days, smiled broadly in a good-natured way as he went on to say:
"It may be you are right, Bob. A fellow could never again be just the same, after hearing the roar of modern howitzers, and seeing monster shells bursting above, behind, in front, and on either side of him. Besides we've worked for hours like steam engines in a Red Cross field hospital. But I wish some one would tell me just why the Government is holding our regiment here while the days come and go, with Spring now at hand."
"I reckon you know the answer about as well as any one, Sid. Since you say you're looking for information, however, I'll try and oblige you by spreading it out in plain language."
"I wish you would, Bob, and hit the bullseye plum centre while you're about it."
"Then listen while I put all the rumors that have been floating around camp into a concrete whole. I make out Congress will soon declare that a state of war already exists between our country and Germany, because of the sinking of American ships going about their lawful business on the high seas. Now, we know that there are a big number of German sympathizers around, many of whom are in the employ of the Kaiser's Secret Service as spies and agents. It's been so in England, Belgium, France and Italy, as well as Russia. Uncle Sam is afraid that just as soon as the President says we're at war some of these slick parties will get busy, and try to start a reign of frightfulness all over the country. As our regular army is pretty much all down there in Mexico you can see that the State troops will have to be depended on to stand guard. We'll have to keep rioters from doing all sorts of terrible damage in cities and through the country sections."