“I had never believed they would do it,” said Wilkins….
“Both my boys,” said Dodd, “have gone into the Officers’ Training Corps. They were in their cadet corps at school.”
“Wasn’t one an engineer?” asked Boon.
“The other was beginning to paint rather well,” said Dodd. “But it all has to stop.”
“I suppose I shall have to do something,” said the London eavesdropper. “I’m thirty-eight…. I can ride and I’m pretty fit…. It’s a nuisance.”
“What is a man of my kind to do?” asked Wilkins. “I’m forty-eight.”
“I can’t believe the French are as bad as they seem,” said Boon. “But, anyhow, we’ve no business to lean on the French…. But I wonder now—— Pass me that map.”
§ 4
Next week things had mended, and the French and British were pushing the Germans back from the Marne to the Aisne. Whatever doubts we had felt about the French were dispelled in that swift week of recovery. They were all right. It was a stupendous relief, for if France had gone down, if her spirit had failed us, then we felt all liberalism, all republicanism, all freedom and light would have gone out in this world for centuries.