"Oh no, Harry is the individual Englishman; the lion represents the race."
"But the race is an accumulation of individuals."
"I say, don't listen too intelligently," Hazlewood begged. "It's not fair either to my babbling or to your own dinner."
"Well, I want to bring you back to the point you made when you talked about the historical tragedy of this war."
Hazlewood looked serious.
"I meant what I said. I've just come from the grave of what was England, and already the deeds at Gallipoli have taken on the aspect of a heroic frieze. We might have repeated Gallipoli here in Serbia, but we sha'n't; we've learned our lesson; I do not think that on such a scale such decorative heroism can ever happen again. Gallipoli saw the death of the amateur; and a conservative like myself feels the historical tragedy of such a death. I suppose there are few people who would be prepared to argue that such a spirit ought to be purchased at such a price, and yet I don't know—I believe I would. I wasn't in Flanders at the beginning; but I imagine the same spirit existed there. Don't you remember the childlike, amateurish pleasure that all the soldiers took in being ferried across the Channel without anybody's knowing they had gone? The successful secrecy compensated them for all that hell of Mons. You'll never again hear of that childlike enjoyment. Very soon we shall have conscription, and from that moment the amateur in a position of responsibility who sacrifices any man's life to his own sense of exterior form will become a criminal. Surely it is an appalling tragedy that we sha'n't be able to carry on such a war as this without conscription? England, our England, disappears with conscription: nothing will ever be the same again. They accused us of decadence, but had you seen that landing last April—had you seen that immortal division of Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen literally dyeing the sea with their blood, you could never have thought of decadence again. And yet, mark my words, so much of England was lost upon that day that already the unthinking herd led by the newspapers, which are always waiting to hail the new king, talks of the landing as famous chiefly for the Australian share in it. My God, it enrages me to read about the Australians when I think of that deathless dead division. Whatever else may happen in this war, whatever our fate at the hands of intriguing politicians and backbiting generals, England was herself upon that day: it stands with Trafalgar and Agincourt in a trinity of imperishable glory."
"But why do you say that so much of England was lost? You don't think we shall disgrace ourselves henceforth in this war?"
"We have already done so morally in failing to come to the help of the Serbians. Gallipoli turned us into professionals, and though I'm not saying that there is a single good professional argument in favor of helping Serbia, I still believe against all professionals that we shall pay for our failure in bitter years of prolonged war. The Dardanelles could have been forced. What stopped it? Professional jealousy at home."
"It's a hard thing of which to accuse the people at home."
"It was a hard thing to land that day at Sedd-el-bahr, but it was done. No, we've fallen a prey to the glamour of Teutonism, and of being expedient and Hunnish. By the time the war is over I don't doubt we shall be a very pretty imitation of the real article that we're setting out to destroy. But, thank Heaven, we shall always be able to point to Mons and to Antwerp and to Gallipoli: though we are fast forgetting to be gentlemen, we've already forgotten more than the Germans ever dreamed of in that direction. Mind you, I'm not attempting to say that we haven't got to hit below the belt: we have, because we are fighting with foul fighters; but that is what I conceive to be the historical tragedy of this war—the debasement of our ideals in order that we may compete with the Germans, and with the old men in morocco-chairs at home, and with the guttural press. I remember how the waning moon of dawn came up out of Asia while we were still waiting for news of the Suvla landing. There was a tattoo of musketry over the sea, a lisp of wind in the sandy grass; and in a moment of apprehensive chill I divined that with a failure at Suvla this waning moon was the last moon that would rise upon the old way of thinking, the rare old way of acting, the old, old merry England built in a thousand years."