Were it not of interest he would not have been sent to report it.

He watches men acting under the stress of all the great emotions.

He sees them inspired by noble courage, pity, the spirit of self-sacrifice, of loyalty, and pride of race and country.
In Cuba I saw Captain Robb Church of our army win the Medal of Honor, in South Africa I saw Captain Towse of the Scot Greys win his Victoria Cross.

Those of us who watched him knew he had won it just as surely as you know when a runner crosses the home plate and scores.

Can the man at home from the crook play or the home run obtain a thrill that can compare with the sight of a man offering up his life that other men may live?
When I returned to New York every second man I knew greeted me sympathetically with: "So, you had to come home, hey?
They wouldn't let you see a thing." And if I had time I told him all I saw was the German, French, Belgian, and English armies in the field, Belgium in ruins and flames, the Germans sacking Louvain, in the Dover Straits dreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedo destroyers, submarines, hydroplanes; in Paris bombs falling from air-ships and a city put to bed at 9 o'clock; battle-fields covered with dead men; fifteen miles of artillery firing across the Aisne at fifteen miles of artillery; the bombardment of Rheims, with shells lifting the roofs as easily as you would lift the cover of a chafing-dish and digging holes in the streets, and the cathedral on fire; I saw hundreds of thousands of soldiers from India, Senegal, Morocco, Ireland, Australia, Algiers, Bavaria, Prussia, Scotland, saw them at the front in action, saw them marching over the whole northern half of Europe, saw them wounded and helpless, saw thousands of women and children sleeping under hedges and haystacks with on every side of them their homes blazing in flames or crashing in ruins.