"The mad dog of Europe—defence of the Realm—wait till the Cossacks get to Berlin" savouring the ominous implication: "Kitchener wants five hundred thousand men——"
"Casualty list...."
There was a different note to the saying of that; a curt rather harsh inflection, where in other cases one might slide the syllables lingeringly. But—"Casualty list"—No, one was dry and businesslike over that.
"Efficiency!" muttered Gareth in the same tone.
A newspaper boy scampered past him in the hot stale sunshine, creaking: "Off-i-shul! six-thirty off-i-shul! 'Eavy fighting at...." the name was blurred. "Off-i-shul!"
Official!... Of course one had heard it at the time of the Boer War; a little while after he and Kathleen——He remembered bringing her home the evening papers, and her fierce incisive comments upon the situation. Well—now he brought the late editions home to Patricia. The strain between them of the things unmentionable had been blown to bits by the eruption of the war; now there was always news, real news, off-i-shul news, for their discussion; general discussion, which as yet had not dwindled to the personal question.
He glanced at the stop-press column. No longer any doubt about it: Paris was saved. The German hordes had been rolled back at the eleventh hour. Gareth swung down the Strand, with the Marseillaise crashing exultantly through his brain, temporarily displacing his other orchestral selection of phrases. The French, as a nation, appealed to him tremendously; and he was glad we were concerned, in howsoever a minor degree, with the salvation of the City of Light. His eye caught a glimpse of a portrait of the Belgian King in the window of a picture-shop; the handsome, fair, somewhat stolid face had lately become familiar as the hitherto unknown strains of Belgium's anthem; his ear was arrested by a passerby exclaiming excitedly: "Why did the Russian steam-roller——" the rest was lost in a surge of human traffic outside the recruiting-office. "Why did the steam-roller?" Gareth asked himself absurdly; and went on with the question for quite a long time before he realized that there was no prescribed answer to it.
A detachment of bluejackets marched past, their red faces grinning cheerfully ... one globular patch of red after another, with a curious rhythmical effect of repetition.
A patriotic shopkeeper had decorated his frontage with the intertwined flags of the Allies ... "Intertwined...."
"... And the shores of Ireland will be defended by her armed sons, North and South together!"