“Thank you,” said Richard gently, passing the letters back. Most of the last pages were filled up with pencil crosses; he wondered if Harold knew....
The music was holding its breath while Li Hung Wang surpassed himself in a last effort of magic; resulting in a terrific display of flags; and the curtains swaying together, back again, and once more together to the opening chords of “Land of Hope and Glory.”
Immediately the men of St Dunstan’s shuffled to their feet and stood at attention while they sang through the first verse of Elgar’s anthem, till the whole risen audience, enthusiastically joining in, swamped their voices in a volume of louder, fresher sound....
And Richard carried out into the Strand the blurred vision of uneven rows of weedy, shambling figures in their ill-fitting mufti, the ephemeral vanity of khaki shed now for good, ordinary men in ordinary casual clothes, heads tilted stiffly backwards:
“Land of Hope and Glory
Mother of the Free—”
And he knew that though the picture of Trudchen Redbury perplexed over the question whether tidings of Con’s death in the English trenches should be sent to spoil the birthday of her sister Anna in Berlin, might and did symbolize an international predicament—yet that other picture was indeed war and the splendour of war and beyond war; was patriotism itself, the urge and reason for patriotism, the ultimate answer to all niggling private issues; he knew that before war and after war, war may be averted; but during war ours is to shut both eyes and stand by the blind and follow the dead.
And then, in all the forgetful semi-hysterical jubilance of the pride of belonging, he was brought to a standstill as though by a pounding blow on the forehead, confronted with a placard of a weekly journal just out:
“Enemy Aliens. Intern them all.”
As surely a personal message for him, as a Salvationist’s shouted text goes straight home to the heart of a sinner.