CHAPTER EIGHT SANCTUARY

" . . . And I have waited long for thee

Before I poured the wine!"

Robert Buchanan: The Ballad of Judas Iscariot.

1

The winter months of 1917 passed sadly for anyone who was condemned to live in the depression of London. I was well enough to go back to work in February, but I stayed on at "The Sanctuary," because, with all its nerve-racking discomfort, I had not the heart to go away when both Bertrand and George pressed me so warmly to remain. Three, they said, were less depressing than two, though I came to doubt it. For the tenth time, we seemed to be entering upon the last decisive phase of the war; Germany had begun her unrestricted submarine campaign, it was inevitable that America should abandon her neutrality. (Since the Presidential election and with every day that brought intervention nearer, our press became less scornful of the President; it ceased to misquote and misinterpret phrases about a nation that was too proud to fight or a peace without victory.) But the race would be hotly contested. The submarine campaign at sea, a win-through-at-all-costs offensive on land had to put Germany in a position to dictate terms before the incalculable weight of American arms was thrown into the scale against her.

Men wore grave faces in those days. Though few could give accurate figures of the tonnage which was being sunk daily or of the stocks of food on which we could depend, everyone knew that prices had soared until they had to be arbitrarily fixed by the Government; everyone knew that already certain foods were unprocurable and that the privations were unlikely to grow less. Meatless days and three-course dinners were but the beginning, and Bertrand, who was by now almost reconciled to the continuation of war in the hope that it would discredit the new Government, shook his head gloomily at me and wondered morosely how long the proud-stomached people of England would consent to go on short commons.

And it was not only in food that the shortage was being felt. Omniscient critics, who had a figure and a date ready for every question, whispered that, since the Somme campaign, we were short of recruits to the extent of a hundred thousand men, and the whisper, growing in volume, was the signal for a campaign, half malicious, half patriotic, and wholly mischievous. The unessential industries must yield up their young men, the civil service must be purged of its indispensables, and, that not even one fish should slip through the meshes of the net, those who had been exempted, rejected or discharged from the army, were required to present themselves for re-examination. The campaign evoked one flash of opposition, not serious in itself, but of interest as a symptom of turbulent discontent; mass meetings of discharged soldiers, each with his silver badge, assembled to declare their intention of not being sent out again until others had done their share.

"The wheel has swung the full circle now," said George one night. "I was up before a board to-day. The doctors seemed to feel that it was a personal score for them that my eyes weren't bad enough for me to be rejected; but, when they came to my heart, they were quite indignant. They couldn't pass me on that, but it was a personal grievance and I shouldn't have been a bit surprised if they'd tested me to see if I'd been chewing cordite.... I suppose it's not to be wondered at; I'm not as keen to go out as I was two and a half years ago; I shouldn't be keen at all, if it wasn't for the feeling that I'm left, that all my friends have been killed.... And they must get men from somewhere. This Russian revolution is a very fine and hopeful thing in itself, but the Russians are so much absorbed in it that they can't spare time to bother about the war, and the Germans are withdrawing the best part of their troops from the East. I don't know where you're going to get men from. The papers keep yapping about Ireland, but I wonder how many of their inspired leader-writers know anything about the country."

It was one of many discussions, when George would come home late and tired from his office, Bertrand later and more tired from the House.