"You wouldn't expect a man like him to take such an interest in little things," he said.
"It's only by taking an interest in little things that you can get big ones to come right," I told him. "Remember what I told you about Kitchener and the rails for the new line in the Soudan."
"Do you think we shall ever really have a war with Germany, Big Yeogh Wough?"
"Yes, dear, very surely. If it comes in my lifetime, I hope it will come before I am old, because there will be dreadful things happen which old people will not be able to face. It might mean almost a going back to savage life—even at home in England."
He looked at me as if he thought I could not mean what I was saying. He knows better now.
On the ship they called him the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and said he might be safely referred to when any information on any subject was required.
"If I'm still in the position I'm in now when that boy gets old enough to think of making a start in the world, I hope you'll let me be of some use to him," said a high Government official who was among the passengers. "You and his father are not thinking of the Army for him, of course. His eyes not being right puts soldiering out of court."
"His eyes will be all right in a few months," I replied. "But we should not think of the Army for him, in any case. By the way, there isn't a single soldier among the people on this ship."
No, there was not a single soldier on board. And yet, since then, I have shed tears for five of the men who were before me as I talked that day, and who have given up their lives for their country. Many others whom I did not know so well have gone over the awful border, too, and the rest are in khaki; all the rest, that is, who had something of youth still in their blood.