'Do you know anything about soldiering?'
'I don't think so. I remember nothing. Why do you ask?'
'Because when those soldiers saluted me just now, you returned the salute.'
'Did I? I didn't know. Perhaps I saw you doing so and I unconsciously followed your lead. But I don't think I do know anything about soldiering. I remember nothing about it, anyhow.'
This conversation took place in the early spring of 1915, just as England began to realize that we were actually at war. The first flush of recruiting had passed, and hundreds of thousands of our finest young men had volunteered for the Army. But a kind of apathy had settled upon the nation, and fellows who should have come forward willingly hung back.
I had been fairly successful in my recruiting campaign; nevertheless I was often disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm manifested. I found that young men gave all sorts of foolish excuses as reasons for not joining; and when this stranger volunteered, as it seemed to me, unthinkingly, and without realizing the gravity of the step he was taking, I hesitated.
'Of course you understand that you are doing a very important thing?' I said. 'We are at war, and fellows who volunteer know that they are possibly volunteering for death.'
'Oh yes, of course.' He said this in what seemed to me such a casual and matter-of-fact way that I could not believe he realized what war was.
'The casualty list is already becoming very serious,' I continued. 'You see, we are having to send out men after a very short training, and thus it comes about that the lads who, when war broke out, never dreamed of being soldiers, are now, many of them, either maimed and crippled for life, or dead. You quite realize what you are doing?'
'Certainly,' he replied, 'but then, although I have forgotten nearly everything else, I have not forgotten that I am an Englishman, and of course, as an Englishman, I could do no other than offer myself to my country. Still, I'd like to know the exact nature of our quarrel with Germany.'