Nicky-Nan, Reservist

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Naybours all," he said,—"I don't suppose these here proceedin's will conclude much afore ten o'clock: after which it'll take me the best part of an hour to get home; an' what with one thing and another I doubt it'll be far short o' midnight afore my missus gets me to bed. Whereby, knowin' my habits, you'll see that I reckon this to be summat more than an ord'nary occasion: the reason bein', as you know, that pretty well the hull of Europe's in a state o' War: which, when such a thing happens, it behoves us. I'll say no more than that, as Britons, it behoves us. It was once said by a competent observer that Britons never, never—if Miss Rounsell will oblige?"

This was a rehearsed effect. Miss Rounsell, taking her cue, struck the key-board, and as Miss Charity Oliver (in the front row) testified next morning, "the effect was electric." All sprang to their feet and sang the chorus of Rule, Britannia! till the windows shook.

"Thenk 'ee, friends," continued Farmer Best, as the tumult and the singers subsided. "There's no more to say but that most of 'ee's heard tell, in one way or another at some time of his life, of Armygeddon. Well, this here's of it; an' if you ask my opinion o' that fellow they call the Kaiser, I say I wouldn' sleep in his bed for a million o' money. And with these few remarks I will no longer stand between 'ee and Mr Boult, who is a speaker all the way from London, an' will no doubt give us a Treat an' persuade many of our young friends in front to join up."

Mr Boult arose amid violent applause. He pulled the lappels of his frock-coat together. He spoke, and from the first moment it was clear that he held at command all the tricks of the hired orator. He opened with an anecdote from the life of President Garfield, and a sentimental application that made the Vicar wince. He went on to point out, not unimpressively, that Armageddon ("as you, sir, have so aptly and so strikingly termed it") had actually broken upon the world. Farmer Best, flattered by this acknowledgment of copyright in the word, smiled paternally.

"It has burst like a thunderstorm upon the fields of Belgium; but the deluge it discharges is a deluge of blood intermingled with human tears. And where, my friends, is Belgium? How far distant lie these trodden and wasted fields, these smoking villages, these harvests where men's bodies crush the corn and their blood pollutes the food they planted to sustain it? Listen: those fields lie nearer London than does your little village: men are dying—yes, and women and little children are being massacred—far nearer London than you are peacefully sitting at this moment."

"Come!" thought the Vicar, "this fellow is talking sense after all, and talking it rather well." Mr Rounsell stood up and pointed out the positions of Liege and Polpier on the wall-map, and their relative distances from London. A moment later the Vicar frowned again as Mr Boult launched into a violent—and as it turned out, a lengthy—invective against the German Emperor; with the foulness of whose character and designs he had, it seemed, been intimately acquainted for a number of years. "Who made the War?" "Who had been planning it and spying for the opportunity to gratify his unbridled lust of power?" "Who would stand arraigned for it before the awful tribunal of God?" &c. The answer was "the Kaiser," "the Kaiser," "the Kaiser Wilhelm"—Mr Boult pronounced the name in German and threw scorn into it.

—"Which," mused the Vicar, "is an argument ad invidiam; and, when one comes to think of it, rather a funny one. The man is still talking sense, though: only I wish he'd talk it differently."

Then for a quarter of an hour Mr Boult traced the genesis of the War, with some ability but in special-pleader style and without a particle of fairness. He went on to say that he, personally, was not in favour of Conscription. [As a matter of fact he had spoken both for and against Compulsory Service on many public platforms.] He believed in the Voluntary Principle: and looking on the many young men gathered in the body of the hall, and more particularly at the back ["excellent material" he called them, too], he felt convinced there would be no hanging back that night; but to-morrow, or, rather, Monday, when he returned to London he would be able to report that the heart of Polpier was sound and fired with a resolve to serve our common country. Mr Boult proceeded to make the Vicar writhe in his seat by a jocular appeal to "the young ladies in the audience" not to walk-out with any young man until he had clothed himself in khaki. He wound up with one of his most effective perorations, boldly enlisting John Bright and the Angel of Death; and sat down amid tumultous applause. It takes all sorts to make a world, and this kind of speech.

Farmer Best called upon the Vicar.

"I wish," said Mr Steele, "to add just a word or two to emphasise one particular point in Mr Boult's speech; or, rather, to put it in a somewhat different light. And I shall be brief, lest I spoil the general effect on your minds of his very powerful appeal.