The room heard—in a disconcerting silence—while he explained that they were two of a “deputation” of working men brought out to “see the conditions” at the Front, and go back and tell their mates in the shops what they saw.
“It’s a pity,” said the Corporal gently when he finished, “you ’adn’t come to us a day earlier. ’Twoulda bin some condition you’da seen.”
“Wot d’jer want to see?” asked another. “This ... ain’t front ezackly.” “Listen!” cried another, “ain’t that a shell comin’ over? Take cover!” And the room tittered, the nearest shell being a good five miles away.
“Want to see everything,” said the deputy. “We’re going in the trenches to-morrow, but bein’ here to-night we asked your Cap’n where we’d meet some o’ the boys, an’ he brought us here.”
“Wot trenches—wot part?” he was asked, and when, innocently enough, he named a part that for years has had the reputation of a Quaker Sunday School for peacefulness, a smile flickered round. The deputy saw the smile. He felt uneasy; things weren’t going right; there wasn’t the eager welcome, the anxious questions after labour conditions and so on he had expected. So he lifted his voice again and talked. He was a good talker, which perhaps was the reason he was a chosen deputy. But he didn’t hold the room. Some listened, others resumed their own chat, others went on with the business of the evening, the drinking of thin beer. When he had finished the other man spoke, with even less success. There is some excuse for this. You cannot quite expect men who have been working like niggers under the filthiest possible conditions of wet and mud, weather and squalor, have been living and working, sleeping and eating, with sudden and violent death at their very elbows, to come straight out of their own inferno and be in any way deeply interested in abstract conditions of Labour at Home, or to be greatly sympathetic to the tea-and-butter shortage troubles of men who are earning good money, working in comfortable shops, and living in their own homes. The men were much more interested in affairs in France.
“Wot’s the idea anyway?” asked one man. “Wot’s the good o’ this tour business?”
“We’ve come to see the facks,” said a deputy. “See ’em for ourselves, and go back home to tell ’em in the shops what you chaps is doing.”
“Wish they’d let some of us swap places wi’ them in the shops,” was the answer. “I’d tell ’em something, an’ they’d learn a bit too, doin’ my job here.”
“The workers, Labour, wants to know,” went on the deputy, ignoring this. “Some says finish the war, and some says get on with it, and——”
“Which are you doing?” came in swift reply, and “How many is on this deputation job?”