"It's jolly to have you back again, old chap."
That was all, and, perhaps, enough.
In bed, the Squire had no inclination to sleep. He wanted to think things out. He wanted to adjust past and present conditions, to strike some happy mean between them. Could he interpret the significance of this never-ending slaughter? Lionel had told him of a German regiment pushing too far ahead, and annihilated, not a man left. That had been described, also, as a "show."
More—and worse—Lionel ridiculed the suggestion of an early peace. Kitchener was under the mark. The war was quite likely to last five years.
Five years!
Men such as his son, decent, quiet, sport-loving chaps, admitted with a laugh—with a laugh!!!—that the enemy was "hot stuff," and that attrition would determine the end—and nothing else.
Attrition.
He attempted to envisage what attrition meant where millions were engaged. Put the lot at twenty millions. How many would perish? What Divine Purpose could be accomplished by such a holocaust?
But his boy was safe for the next few weeks.
Two days later he brought him back to Pomfret Court.