“I apologize.” Dick bowed to the court.
“But if,” the Military Representative continued—“if your objection is not religious, may I ask what it is?”
“It is based on a belief that all war is wrong, and that the solidarity of the human race can only be achieved in practice by protesting against war, wherever it appears and in whatever form.”
“Do you disbelieve in force, Mr. Greenow?”
“You might as well ask me if I disbelieve in gravitation. Of course, I believe in force: it is a fact.”
“What would you do if you saw a German violating your sister?” said the Military Representative, putting his deadliest question.
“Perhaps I had better ask my sister first,” Dick replied. “She is sitting just behind you in the court.”
The Military Representative was covered with confusion. He coughed and blew his nose. The case dragged on. Dick made a speech; the Military Representative made a speech; the Chairman made a speech. The atmosphere of the court-room grew fouler and fouler. Dick sickened and suffocated in the second-hand air. An immense lassitude took possession of him; he did not care about anything—about the cause, about himself, about Hyman or Millicent or Pearl Bellairs. He was just tired. Voices buzzed and drawled in his ears—sometimes his own voice, sometimes other people’s. He did not listen to what they said. He was tired—tired of all this idiotic talk, tired of the heat and smell. . . .
Tired of picking up very thistly wheat sheaves and propping them up in stooks on the yellow stubble. For that was what, suddenly, he found himself doing. Overhead the sky expanded in endless steppes of blue-hot cobalt. The pungent prickly dust of the dried sheaves plucked at his nose with imminent sneezes, made his eyes smart and water. In the distance a reaping-machine whirred and hummed. Dick looked blankly about him, wondering where he was. He was thankful, at any rate, not to be in that sweltering court-room; and it was a mercy, too, to have escaped from the odious gentility of the Military Representative’s accent. And, after all, there were worse occupations than harvesting.