The stupid brutes of guards were rats, and they gnawed the intelligence of me, gnawed all the fine nerves of the quick of me and of the consciousness of me.

And I, who in my past have been a most valiant fighter, in this present life was no fighter at all.

I was a farmer, an agriculturist, a desk-tied professor, a laboratory slave, interested only in the soil and the increase of the productiveness of the soil.
I fought in the Philippines because it was the tradition of the Standings to fight.

I had no aptitude for fighting.

It was all too ridiculous, the introducing of disruptive foreign substances into the bodies of little black men-folk.