He is able to think coherently; he is able to look on things in their proper perspective. He knows. The bits in the kaleidoscope begin to group coherently, to take definite form, and he views the picture from the standpoint of a rational man. To him the leave-train contains no illusions; the territory is not unknown. No longer does a dead Hun dwarf his horizon to the exclusion of all else. He has looked on the thing from close quarters; he has been mad with passion and shaking with fright; he has been cold and wet, he has been hot and thirsty. Like a blaze of tropical vegetation from which individual colours refuse to be separated, so does the jumble of his life in Flanders strike him as he looks back on it. Isolated occurrences seem unreal, hard to identify. The little things which then meant so much now seem so paltry; the things he hardly noticed now loom big. Above all, the grim absurdity of the whole thing strikes him; civilisation has at last been defined....
He marvels that men can be such wonderful, such super-human fools; his philosophy changes. He recalls grimly the particular night on which he crept over a dirty ploughed field and scrambled into a shell-hole as he saw the thin green streak of a German flare like a bar of light against the blackness; then the burst—the ghostly light flooding the desolate landscape—the crack of a solitary rifle away to his left. And as the flare came slowly hissing down, a ball of fire, he saw the other occupant of his hiding-place—a man's leg, just that, nothing more. And he laughs; the thing is too absurd.
It is; it is absurd; it is monstrous, farcical. The realisation has come to him; he is sane—for a time.
Sane: but for how long? It varies with the type. There are some who love the game—who love it for itself alone. They sit on the steps of the War Office, and drive their C.O.'s mad: they pull strings both male and female, until the powers that be rise in their wrath, and consign them to perdition and—France.
There are others who do not take it quite like that. They do not want to go back particularly—and if they were given an important job in England, a job for which they had special aptitude, in which they knew they were invaluable, they would take it without regret. But though they may not seek earnestly for France—neither do they seek for home. Their wants do not matter; their private interests do not count: it is only England to-day....
And lastly there is a third class, the class to whom that accursed catch-phrase, "Doing his bit," means everything. There are some who consider they have done their bit—that they need do no more. They draw comparisons and become self-righteous. "Behold I am not as other men are," they murmur complacently; "have not I kept the home fires burning, and amassed money making munitions?" "I am doing my bit." "I have been out; I have been hit—and he has not. Why should I go again? I have done my bit." Well, friend, it may be as you say. But methinks there is only one question worth putting and answering to-day. Don't bother about having done your bit. Are you doing your all? Let us leave it at that.