"Yes, that is it. He is going to march on London with all these men, and dictate terms of peace from there," he added.
"And can you inform me what the British Fleet is going to be doing all this time?" I asked.
"We have no coal, man," was his answer. "Besides, think of the German submarines. They will sink all our ships as fast as we can bring them up."
How long he went on in this strain I hardly know, but that he believed in all he said was evident, and that he took a delight in his mournful prognostications was just as evident.
"Simpson," I said, "Dr. Wise has done me good. I feel better than I have felt for days."
"Yes, sir; thank you, sir," said Simpson. "Has he given you any medicine, sir?"
"Oh, no," I replied. "But he has done me a world of good; only, Simpson, don't allow him to come again."
September passed slowly away, and although I gradually recovered from the effects of the excitement through which I had passed, I did not go far afield, and beyond going into the village, and roaming round the cliffs, I took little or no exercise.
I discovered, as far as the people of St. Issey were concerned, that no sooner had the first effects of the declaration of war passed away, than they settled down to the old mode of living. Indeed, the war was not real to them at all. It was something that was happening a long way off. Only a few of them read the newspapers, and in spite of the bad news which circulated, they had not the slightest doubt about the English soon bringing the Germans to their knees. They found, too, that the war did not affect them in the way they had expected. There was neither scarcity of money nor food; work went on as usual, the harvest was garnered, and there were no prospects of a famine, which they had feared, coming to pass.
Indeed, as I think of those days, and as I reflect upon my own experiences, I do not so much wonder at the general prevailing sentiment. We are far out of the world down here in Cornwall—St. Issey is some miles from a railway station—and removed as we are from the clash and clamor of the world, it is difficult for us to realize what is going on in the great centres of life. That the war existed we knew, that a great struggle was going on hundreds of miles away was common knowledge, but it did not come home to us.