THE TENTH CHAPTER
1
He had returned to Ireland. In Dublin, he found a strange mixture of emotions. Marsh and Galway and their friends were drilling with greater determination than ever, and occasionally they were to be seen parading the streets. Some of them wore green uniforms, shaped after the pattern of the khaki uniform of the British Army, but most of them wore their ordinary clothes, with perhaps a bandolier and a belt and a slouch hat. They carried rifles of an old make, and had long, clumsy bayonets slung by their sides. It seemed to Henry as he watched a company of them marching through College Green that these men were not of the fighting breed ... that these pale clerks and young workmen and elderly professors and hungry, emaciated labourers were unlikely to deal in the serious work of war ... and when he met John Marsh in the evening, he sneered at him. Marsh kept his temper. He was more tolerant now than he had been in the days when he had tutored Henry at Ballymartin. He admitted that the Sinn Feiners were widely unpopular. There were many reasons why they should be. Dublin was full of men and women mourning for their sons who had died at Suvla Bay ... and were in no mood for rebellion.
"The war's popular in the Combe," he said. "The women are better off now than they were in peace times. That's a handsome tribute to civilisation, isn't it? The country people are the worst. They're rich ... the war's bringing them extraordinary prosperity ... and some of our people are tactless. But we've got to go on. We've got to save Ireland's soul!..."
Henry made an impatient gesture. "Why do you talk that high-falutin' stuff," he said.
"It isn't high-falutin' stuff, Henry. I'm speaking what I believe to be the truth. The English have tried a new way to kill the Irish spirit, and by God they look like succeeding. They couldn't kill it by persecuting us, they couldn't kill it by ruining us, but they may kill it by making us prosperous. I feel heart-broken when I talk to the farmers. Money! That's all they think about. They rob their children of their milk and feed them on tea, so's they can make a few more pence. Oh, they're being anglicised, Henry! If we can only blow some of the greed out of them, well have done something worth while!"
He was more convinced now than ever that the Irish were to be betrayed by the English after the war.
"Look how they minimise our men's bravery at the front. Even the Irish Times is protesting!..."
It seemed to Henry to be ridiculous to believe that the English government was deliberately depreciating the work of the Irish soldiers, and he said so. "They hardly mention the names of any regiments," he pointed out.
But John Marsh had an answer for him. He produced a despatch written by a British admiral in which was narrated the story of the landing at Suvla Bay and the beaches about Gallipoli.