“Surely not more so for him than for anyone else.”
“There we shan’t agree. There’s a kind of man who can’t keep out of a scrap wherever one happens to be going. And in these islands you’ve got more of that sort to the square mile than anywhere else I’ve visited, although I’ve not yet seen the Basutos. But Gervase Brandon is not of that type. War is against every instinct that man’s got. He hates it with every fiber of his nature.”
“There are many thousands like him,” said the vicar; “many thousands who have simply given their lives—and more than their lives—in a just quarrel.”
“I know. But the quarrel was not his, and he didn’t make it. And it was not as if, like the Belgians, the French, and the Russians, he had the Hun on his doorstep. It would have been quite easy for a man like that to say: ‘Leave it to the British Navy. Sooner or later they are bound to clear up the mess.’”
“He was too honest to do that,” said the vicar. “He saw that a test case had arisen between right and wrong, between God and Antichrist, and he simply went and did his duty.”
“Well, I can only say,” Mr. Murdwell rejoined, “that when I saw him the other day he seemed to believe in neither.”
“That’s because you don’t really know him. Just now, it is true, he is in rather a disturbed state mentally. He has always had a skeptical mind, and there have been times when I’ve been tempted to think that he gave it too much latitude. And just now he is suffering a bad reaction after the horrors he’s been through. And of course he has had to give up the hope of ever walking again. But whatever the opinions of such a man may be, it is only right and fair to judge him by his actions.”
“Yes, he’s made a big sacrifice. And the tragedy of it is he feels now that he’s made it in vain.”
“His mental health is not what it might be just now, poor fellow. He has said things to me about Prussia winning, even if she loses and so on, which I know he cannot really believe.”
“Why not?”