His exuberance was for a moment dulled.
“She’s having such a rotten time. The Guv’nor has put his foot down over any more correspondence with Aunt Anna, this last year—just as if it would affect nations if two sisters wrote their pathetic loving little letters to tell each other of their sons killed and the hardship of getting good servants nowadays.... But the black curtain is down between Hampstead and Berlin now—and Mum’s wondering always what is going on behind it.” He was silent a moment, then burst out indignantly, “What harm can he possibly suppose it would do——” and left the sentence unfinished. But Richard, under “he” was flashed a complete picture of Otto, very bilious, very Jingo, in the art of disciplining Trudchen....
“People are queer nowadays ...” was all he found to say.
“Queer the other way round, too,” David said thoughtfully. “Would any country in all the world but England ensure that her prisoners of war be fed on the fat of the land, while her own people want? It’s a sort of splendid crack-brained chivalry—The German fellows don’t understand it; makes ’em laugh. It is highly comic when you come to think of it.... ‘For Allah created the English mad, the maddest of all mankind!’”
“It’s the old-established tradition of chivalry still upheld by officialdom. I doubt if it’s in the blood of the people any more; they grumble about it—call it treachery, not chivalry.”
“Those are only the people left over, not the fighters. One learns bad habits if one is left over.... I’m glad we’re both for the thick of it now, Richard.”
“Yes....”
“Is it all right for you? I mean, you’re sure——”
“Phillips promised. I haven’t heard yet....” But he was so sure that he said quickly: “Of course I may be let down any moment, in fact, I suppose I’ve no earthly chance——”
David smiled at the unconsciously Jewish trait revealed in the semi-Jew: the instinct that is afraid to trust its own luck—aloud; instinct that has learnt to fear the duration of good luck, and thinks to propitiate Jehovah by an affectation of incredulity. David himself had behaved in this fashion since his earliest babyhood. Victims of persecution—was it persecution or justice now meted out to Richard and his like?—children of No Man’s Land.... “Persecution is for being something wrong; justice for doing something wrong,” came to David in a flash of insight. Nobody could help being—all down the ages ... Jews—niggers,—slaves—Huguenots—early Christians—Saxon serfs....