The doctor thinks that the major and the narrator do not believe in the healing power of the machines. The purpose of the machines is to cure the injured soldiers of some of their disabilities. For instance, the narrator’s “knee does not bend, and the leg drops straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine is supposed to bend the knee and make it move.” The doctor knows that the narrator and the major are pessimistic of the ability of the machines to restore partial, if not full, use of their deformed limbs. This is why he continually encourages them. He tells the narrator things like “What did you like best to do before the war? Did you practice a sport? You will be able to play football again better than ever.” He shows the major a photograph of a withered hand that transforms after machine therapy and asks him whether he has confidence that his hand too will undergo the same transformation—a question the major answers in the negative.
Even though the major does not believe in the machines, he is a regular visitor at the hospital. One day, his wife dies and stressed out, he openly talks about his disbelief in the machines. He says that the machines are “an idiotic idea, a theory like another.” Afterward, he misses three consecutive hospital visits, and when he does start to visit again he finds that the doctor has framed and put up photographs of “all kinds of wounds, before and after they had been cured by the machines.” In front of the machine used by the major, there are three photographs of deformed hands, just like the major’s, fully restored. The doctor understands that the major is going through a very difficult time and that his faith in the treatment given in the hospital has faltered. He hopes that the photographs on the wall can help boost the morale of all the patients in the hospital so that they follow through with the treatment.
The doctor of "In Another Country" realizes the narrator and especially the major do not believe his encouragements that their injuries will be healed and they will return to normal. In fact, these men are now rather detached from the war, and there is no longer anything holding them together except that they meet at the hospital in the afternoons.
As an American, the narrator has only been connected to the other men because he fought with them in the war, but now that they do not fight in the war anymore, he is detached from these men, separated by nationality and his medals. For, he has been given the medals "because I was an American," whereas the Italian soldiers demonstrated uncommon valor.
At the hospital, the narrator and the major are put on the machines in which they have no faith, despite the pictures and the encouragement of the doctor. These machines are new and there have yet to be war injuries that prove these devices' worth, only pictures from industrial accidents that the doctor shows them.
"One day the major said it was all nonsense." He contends that the concept of these machines has been an "idiotic idea. . . a theory, like another." Nevertheless, he comes every day to the hospital and looks stoically at the wall as the machine's straps on his once great fencing hand thump up and down on the now withered hand.
It is probably apparent to the doctor that the major is suffering within himself because he has lost his prestige as a fencer and his military position no means much since he can no longer command. One day, the major pulls his withered hand out of the machine and shouts for it to be turned off.
The major apologizes to the American, who is near him: "I am so sorry. . . My wife has just died. You must forgive me." Indeed, no machine can heal the wounds of the soul or even his hand. "I cannot resign myself," the major says of his tragedy. "I am utterly unable to resign myself."The narrator, too, doubts whether the machines will help the major or his own injured knee. He knows he and the others "are the first to use the machines." Therefore, the photographs the doctor has hung "do not make much difference to the major," who now looks absently out the window.
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