National Affairs: Doughboy

He hovered tremulously in a corner. They tore off his father’s fingernails. They crunched his father’s fingers one by one between wooden slabs. They ran his father through the middle with the cold tines of a pitchfork, tossed him on the white snow beside the body of his brother near the grey ice of the Dnieper. George Zagorsky, 25, son of onetime Brigadier General Zagorsky of the Czar’s Imperial Russian Army has good reason to detest “Reds.” Last week George sweltered in Manhattan, parsed verbs, declined nouns and pronouns. He already speaks fluently French, Russian, German, Greek, Italian, Turkish— no English. He has 18 days in which to learn English before his passport expires. He will then be handed a U. S. Army enlistment examination. If he passes, this young aristocrat who has fought from Smyrna to the Ukraine will become a doughboy. Failure means deportation to Russia.