The little American doctor, “Daddy” Small, as we called him, had been made an honorary member of the mess, and he smiled at Fortune through his spectacles, with an air of delighted surprise that such things should be.
“You English,” he said in his solemn way, “are the most baffling people in the world. I have been studying you since I came to France, and all my preconceived ideas have been knocked on the head. We Americans think you are a hard, arrogant, selfish people, without humour or sympathy, made in set moulds, turned out as types from your university and public schools. That is all wrong. I am beginning to see that you are more human, more various, more whimsical than any race in the world. You decline to take life seriously. You won’t take even death seriously. This war—you make a joke of it. The Germans—you kill them in great numbers, but you have a secret liking for them. Fortune’s caricatures are very comical—but not unkind. I believe Fortune is a pro-German. You cannot laugh at the people you hate. I believe England will forgive Germany quicker than any other nation—far quicker than the Americans. France, of course, will never forgive.”
“No,” said Pierre Nesle, who was at the end of the table. “France will never forgive.”
“We are an illogical people,” said the colonel. “It is only logical people who can go on hating. Besides, German music is so-good! So good!”
Harding, who read no paper but the Morning Post, said that as far as he was concerned he would never speak to a German again in his life. He would like to see the whole race exterminated. But he was afraid of the Socialists with their pestilential doctrine of “brotherhood of man.” Lloyd George also filled him with the gravest misgivings.
Dr. Small’s eyes twinkled at him: “There is the old caste that speaks. Tradition against the new world of ideas. Of course there will always be that conflict.... That is a wonderful phrase, ‘the pestilential doctrine of the brotherhood of man.’ I must make a note of it.”
“Shame oh you, doctor,” said Fortune. “You are always jotting down notes about us. I shall find myself docketed as ‘English gentleman, grade 3; full-blooded, inclined to obesity, humorous, strain of insanity due to in-breeding, rare.’”
Dr. Small laughed in a high treble, and then was serious.
“I’m noting down everything. My own psychology, which alarms me; facts, anecdotes, scenes, words. I want to find a law somewhere, the essential thing in human nature. After the war—if there is any afterwards—I want to search for a way out of the jungle. This jungle civilisation. There must be daylight somewhere for the human race.”
“If you find it,” said Brand earnestly, “tell me, doctor.”