"I should have thought if they could stand Nicky's going--"
"That was different. They know it was different."
"Do you suppose I don't know how different it was? They mean I funked it and Nicky didn't."
"They mean that Nicky got what he wanted when he went, and that there was nothing else he could have done so well, except flying, or engineering."
"It comes to the same thing, Nicky simply wasn't afraid."
"Yes, Michael, he was afraid."
"What of?"
"He was most awfully afraid of seeing suffering."
"Well, so am I. And I'm afraid of suffering myself too. I'm afraid of the whole blessed thing from beginning to end."
"That's because you keep on seeing the whole blessed thing from beginning to end. Nicky only saw little bits of it. The bits he liked. Machine-guns working beautifully, and shells dropping in the right places, and trenches being taken.