“My dear fellow, when is a soldier not a soldier?”
“I don’t like riddles.”
“This is a serious question. How long will the War last?”
“Oh,” cried Dormer bitterly, “another two years, I suppose.”
“You’re about twenty wrong. We shall have conscription shortly, then the real strength will be put into the fight and will compensate for the losses of France and the inertia of Russia. We shall then settle down to the real struggle between England and Germany for the markets of the world.”
Dormer frowned. “You’re a Socialist,” he said.
“Never mind my opinions. It won’t matter by the time we get back into civvys what we are!”
Something rose up in Dormer. He said with certainty:
“You’re wrong. The men’ll never stand it. Two years at most.”
“The men stood it very well in the Peninsular for six years, and most of them had been fighting somewhere or other for the previous quarter of a century.”