I nod consent. Then they spread out their little arms, and rush at me.
"Daddy!"
They are climbing on to my knees now, and I give them a ride—"this is how we ride to war."
But they twine their soft arms round my neck until at length I put them down on the floor: "Now go to Mummy—"
And now——
A new picture. How very plainly I see it. We have gone out of a Sunday afternoon beyond the suburbs, gone out with bag and baggage. I see the green fields bright and fair, and see the two kiddies bright and fair. They are rolling about in the grass and chasing the butterflies, and laughing up at me, and crowing with delight as they run after the ball I have thrown down for them to play with. And the sky stretches above us in its Sabbath blue, and so confidently as if it all could never come to an end. And Dora smiles at me with quiet eyes.
Then I come back with a start—I feel my knapsack chafing my back—I feel my rifle—I see the dead at my feet again—
My God! how can these things be? How can these two worlds be so terribly close to each other?...
And we pass on through this first spring crop of dead bodies. No one says a word. No one has a joke. How surreptitiously the others glance aside when some corpse, all too grotesquely mangled, meets their eyes.
I wonder what is passing through their brains?