And I quite believed her.
CHAPTER VIII
"YOU'LL NEVER GET THERE"
As the weeks went on a strange thing happened to me.
At first vaguely, faintly, and then with an ever-deepening intensity, there sprang to life within me a sense of irritation at having to depend on newspapers, or hearsay, for one's knowledge of the chief item in this War,—the Enemy.
An overwhelming desire seized upon me to discover for myself what a certain darksome unknown quantity was like; that darksome, unknown quantity that we were always hearing about but never saw; that we were always moving away from if we heard it was anywhere near; that was making all the difference to everything; that was at the back of everything; that mattered so tremendously; and yet could never be visualized.
The habit of a lifetime of groping for realities began to assert itself, and I found myself chafing at not being able to find things out for myself.
In the descriptions I gleaned from men and newspapers I was gradually discovering many puzzling incongruities.
There are thinkers whose conclusions one honours, and attends to: but these thinkers were not out here, looking at the War with their own eyes. Maeterlinck, for instance, whose deductions would have been invaluable, was in France. Tolstoi was dead. Mr. Wells was in England writing.