“If you must make that d——d noise, I wish you’d put some sense into it.”
“Sense. I was trying to cheer you up!”
“‘Duty ’tis to die’ is jolly cheering, and quite untrue.”
“Oh, is it? What is our duty then?”
“Our duty is to live if we possibly can. And I mean to do it. It’s the people who keep alive who will win the War.”
“According to that, all one has got to do is to get to Blighty, or preferably the United States, and stay there?”
“Not a bit. You exaggerate so. All I said was, that it is foolish to make it a duty to become a casualty.”
“Dormer, I shall never get you to see things in the proper light. You’re like a lamb trying to leap with joy, and never able to get its hind legs off the ground.”
“This is all rot. What connection is there between lambs and leaping, and our jobs? Mine is to see that various people and things are in the position where they will be wanted, at the moment at which they will have most effect in winning the War. Yours is to see that they can speak and be spoken to when required.”
“Lovely, lovely! What a teacher you would have made.”