Her intensity of feeling caused a stir, followed by an embarrassed pause. Maitland brought it to an end by shaking his head good-humouredly.
"I say, Oakleigh, old man, if I may say so, you oughtn't to talk like that, you know. You're a man in a responsible position, people quote what you say. It produces a devilish bad impression."
My instinctive sympathy is always with the minority, and I came mildly to Bertrand's support.
"I agree with Oakleigh to this extent," I said. "All of us here are either women or men over military age. We ought to check the easy impulse to make other people fight to the bitter end."
"You won't hear any peace-talk at the Front," interposed Maitland. "I've just come back from G.H.Q., you know."
Bertrand gave a snort of impatience.
"You won't find people lighting pipes in high-explosive factories," he answered. "It's against the rules. At the present time the policy of the war is dictated by people who can't conceivably be sent to carry it out. Stornaway's quite right. We fat old men sit at home and water the fields of Flanders with other people's blood. We say that, if they don't go on to the bitter end, there'll be another war in ten years. It's wrong, and we've been wrong every day we've gone on after we shewed the Germans that they couldn't overrun Europe at will. I went through the phase of dismembering Germany, deposing the Kaiser, commandeering the Fleet."
There was an unfortunate note of intellectual superiority in his voice, as though he alone had waded through the depths and shallows of folly and was at last (and alone) on dry land. His reward was immediate interruption by a chorus from every quarter of the table at once.
"Perhaps if you'd had a brother in solitary confinement for eight months because he called the guard a Schweinhund, which was the only word they'd given him a chance of learning——" began little Agnes Waring on my left with considerable heat.
"You wouldn't stir a finger to avenge Belgium?" demanded Lady Maitland.