May 23rd, London. No doubt the waitress at the terminus was rather amused by the arrival of three travel-stained creatures, one in mufti and two in uniform, whose first demand was for glasses of clear, cold water. But could she have known she would have been astonished to find that, in spite of our bad crossing, our hunger, and the subsequent good dishes she set before us, none of us remembered anything half as good as this first unboiled, unchlorinated, unsterilised draught.
It is impossible to blame anyone for failing to take war seriously at home. Here, where "business as usual" is the motto, it is literally inconceivable that anything extraordinary is going on in the world. No wonder that a certain number of women were prating recently of the forthcoming Peace Conference at The Hague. Even those who are worst hit, who have lost their nearest and dearest, are so engrossed in their little charities, their bandage-making and knitting and Red Cross lectures, that they have little leisure to mope. London is as gay or gayer than ever, not a bit purged, for every man home on leave is busy making the best of time. How different from the Frenchman, whose one idea on getting out of the trenches is to set his house in order, to instruct the women who are doing his work how to manipulate the latest agricultural implements, to help prepare for the harvest! Aldershot and its vicinity, for all the many lives that have passed out of it for ever, is the same. And here, in the big country houses one visits, people have still leisure to indulge in nerve attacks at the sight of their milliners' bills. Even the rise of that new species, the very temporary gentleman officer, is less remarkable at home. The only change one notices (bar a few dances and cricket matches that have been skipped, maybe out of respect for those who will dance and play no more) is the Continental atmosphere of the streets and theatres.
London is almost as Belgian as Boulogne is anglicised. Rotund Belgians sit knitting in the stalls, their sombre day dresses contrasting strangely with our erstwhile brilliant audiences.
"Evening dress optional but unfashionable," as one theatre announces.
A joy for ever is the element of free-and-easy good-humour brought over by our Colonials. If the last ten months have done no other good, they have at least knit together, in bonds that can never be riven, our wonderful Empire.
[CHAPTER IX]
June, 1915
June 11th—Cumberland. Speaking to a gathering of village folk on work in France, I invited debate. "If King George 'as got wot Kaiser Bill wants, why don't they go and fight it out themselves?" asked one man. "Wot difference would it make to us if the country is ruled by Germans or Englishmen?" said another, a lazy fellow whose fields had remained fallow for years, quite oblivious of the fact that under German regime he would have been in the firing-line months ago. The rest of the audience shivered with the helpless indecision as to what their right course should be: which shows the little faith felt in the present Government, half hoping for, half fearing the conscription of labour that seems imminent.
That there should exist men who openly confess that from their point of view the end of the war will be disastrous is almost incredible. Yet I have come across a clergyman, working in a Midland manufacturing centre, who has many instances of this indifference to recount.