Twice I've
dropped like dead in the shop--strained heart, says the doctor. No
time to eat!--no time to sleep!--come out for an hour, wolf some
brandy down and go back again, and then they tell you you're a
drunken brute! "Shells and guns!" says the Government--"more
shells!--more guns!--deliver the goods!" And we've delivered 'em. My
two brothers are dead in France. I shall be "combed" out directly,
and a "sniper" will get me, perhaps, three days after I get to the
trenches, as he did my young brother. What then? Oh, I know, there's
some of us--the young lads mostly--who've got out of hand, and 'll
give the Government trouble perhaps before they've done. Who can
wonder, when you see the beastly towns they come out of, and the
life they were reared in! And _none of us_ are going to stand
profiteering, and broken pledges, and that kind of thing!'--a sudden
note of passion rushed into the man's voice. 'But after all, when
all's said and done, this is _England_!' he turned with a fine,
unconscious gesture to the woods and green spaces behind him, and
the blue distances of plain--'and we're _Englishmen_--and it's touch
and go whether England's going to come out or go under; and if we
can't pay the Huns for what they've done in Belgium--what they've
done in France!--what they've done to our men on the sea!--well,
it's a devil's world!--and I'd sooner be quit of it, it don't matter
how!'
The man's slight frame shook under the force of his testimony.
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