“It means untold suffering—mourning, poverty, bitterness for years to come.”
“That may be,” said John, “but it’s our job.”
“You are a queer fellow—an idealist one moment and a shouting militarist the next.”
“No, I’m not a militarist, though I do say I want war. I shouldn’t want war if there was anything else on God’s earth that I could want with a reasonable hope of obtaining it. I should take no pleasure in war itself apart from the momentary excitement of the thing; and certainly I’m not dreaming of political gains through war, which is the part of the genuine militarist. I want it just as one wants a thunderstorm to break quickly that one knows must break some time. I’m sick of the tension, of wasting precious years in preparing and waiting. If the end of all our work is to be ‘mourning, poverty, and bitterness for years to come,’ if that’s what we are living for, I want an end of it. I don’t know what is beyond. I don’t care. But, at any rate, it will be a clean sheet—a clean sheet to spoil may be, but a chance to make a fresh start.”
“A chance for you to make a fresh start?”
“I mean—I mean the world in general.”
“But you?”
“Oh, I’m a naval officer for good and all. It’s different for me.”
“Our trade’s going to be an odd one after the war. It may become more or less superfluous. There may be a great pensioning-off.”
“I’ve thought about that—‘after the war.’ But I dare say there’ll be work for us to do.”