VI + 

Dr. Tubbs dashed to Washington to offer the services of the Institute to the War Department. + 

All the members of the staff, except Gottlieb and two others who declined to be so honored, were made officers and told to run out and buy nice uniforms. + 

Tubbs became a Colonel, Rippleton Holabird a Major, Martin and Wickett and Billy Smith were Captains. But the garçons had no military rank whatever, nor any military duties except the polishing of brown riding-boots and leather puttees, which the several warriors wore as pleased their fancies or their legs. And the most belligerent of all, Miss Pearl Robbins, she who at tea heroically slaughtered not only German men but all their women and viperine children, was wickedly unrecognized and had to make up a uniform for herself. + 

The only one of them who got nearer to the front than Liberty Street was Terry Wickett, who suddenly asked for leave, was transferred to the artillery, and sailed off to France. + 

He apologized to Martin: “I’m ashamed of chucking my work like this, and I certainly don’t want to kill Germans⁠—I mean not any more’n I want to kill most people⁠—but I never could resist getting into a big show. Say, Slim, keep an eye on Pa Gottlieb, will you? This has hit him bad. He’s got a bunch of nephews and so on in the German army, and the patriots like Big Foot Pearl will give an exhibit of idealism by persecuting him. So long, Slim, take care y’self.” + 

Martin had vaguely protested at being herded into the army. The war was to him chiefly another interruption to his work, like Pickerbaughism, like earning his living at Wheatsylvania. But when he had gone strutting forth in uniform, it was so enjoyable that for several weeks he was a standard patriot. He had never looked so well, so taut and erect, as in khaki. It was enchanting to be saluted by privates, quite as enchanting to return the salute in the dignified, patronizing, all-comrades-together splendor which Martin shared with the other doctors, professors, lawyers, brokers, authors, and former socialist intellectuals who were his fellow-officers. + 

But in a month the pleasures of being a hero became mechanical, and Martin longed for soft shirts, easy shoes, and clothes with reasonable pockets. His puttees were a nuisance to wear and an inferno to put on; his collar pinched his neck and jabbed his chin; and it was wearing on a man who sat up till three, on the perilous duty of studying calculus, to be snappy at every salute. + 

Under the martinet eye of Col. Director Dr. A. DeWitt Tubbs he had to wear his uniform, at least recognizable portions of it, at the Institute, but by evening he slipped into the habit of sneaking into citizen clothes, and when he went with Leora to the movies he had an agreeable feeling of being Absent Without Leave, of risking at every street corner arrest by the Military Police and execution at dawn. + 

Unfortunately no M.P. ever looked at him. But one evening when in an estimable and innocent manner he was looking at the remains of a gunman who had just been murdered by another gunman, he realized that Major Rippleton Holabird was standing by, glaring. For once the Major was unpleasant: + 

“Captain, does it seem to you that this is quite playing the game, to wear mufti? We, unfortunately, with our scientific work, haven’t the privilege of joining the Boys who are up against the real thing, but we are under orders just as if we were in the trenches⁠—where some of us would so much like to be again! Captain, I trust I shall never again see you breaking the order about being in uniform, or⁠—uh⁠—” + 

Martin blurted to Leora, later: + 

“I’m sick of hearing about his being wounded. Nothing that I can see to prevent his going back to the trenches. Wound’s all right now. I want to be patriotic, but my patriotism is chasing antitoxins, doing my job, not wearing a particular kind of pants and a particular set of ideas about the Germans. Mind you, I’m anti-German all right⁠—I think they’re probably just as bad as we are. Oh, let’s go back and do some more calculus⁠ ⁠… Darling, my working nights doesn’t bore you too much, does it?” + 

Leora had cunning. When she could not be enthusiastic, she could be unannoyingly silent. + 

At the Institute Martin perceived that he was not the only defender of his country who was not comfortable in the garb of heroes. The most dismal of the staff-members was Dr. Nicholas Yeo, the Yankee sandy-mustached head of the Department of Biology. + 

Yeo had put on Major’s uniform, but he never felt neighborly with it. (He knew he was a Major, because Col. Dr. Tubbs had told him he was, and he knew that this was a Major’s uniform because the clothing salesman said so.) He walked out of the McGurk Building in a melancholy, deprecatory way, with one breeches leg bulging over his riding-boots; and however piously he tried, he never remembered to button his blouse over the violet-flowered shirts which, he often confided, you could buy ever so cheap on Eighth Avenue. + 

But Major Dr. Yeo had one military triumph. He hoarsely explained to Martin, as they were marching to the completely militarized dining-hall: + 

“Say, Arrowsmith, do you ever get balled up about this saluting? Darn it, I never can figure out what all these insignia mean. One time I took a Salvation Army Lieutenant for a Y.M.C.A. General, or maybe he was a Portygee. But I’ve got the idea now!” Yeo laid his finger beside his large nose, and produced wisdom: “Whenever I see any fellow in uniform that looks older than I am, I salute him⁠—my nephew, Ted, has drilled me so I salute swell now⁠—and if he don’t salute back, well, Lord, I just think about my work and don’t fuss. If you look at it scientifically, this military life isn’t so awful hard after all!” + 