“It has been borne upon me lately,” said Phineas, “that patriotism is an amazing virtue.”
Doggie drew a foot out of the mud so as to find a less precarious purchase higher up the slope.
“And I’ve been thinking, Phineas, whether it’s really patriotism that has brought you and me into this—what can we call it? Dante’s Inferno is child’s play to it.”
“Dante had no more imagination,” said Phineas, “than a Free Kirk precentor in Kirkcudbright.”
“But is it patriotism?” Doggie persisted. “If I thought it was, I should be happier. If we had orders to go over the top and attack and I could shout ‘England for ever!’ and lose myself just in the thick of it——”
“There’s a brass hat coming down the trench,” said Phineas, “and brass hats have no use for rhapsodical privates.”
They stood to attention as the staff officer passed by. Then Doggie broke in impatiently:
“I wish to goodness you could understand what I’m trying to get at.”
A smile illuminated the gaunt, unshaven, mud-caked face of Phineas McPhail.
“Laddie,” said he, “let England, as an abstraction, fend for itself. But you’ve a bonny English soul within you, and for that you are fighting. And so had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been happily spared. I will leave you, laddie, to seek in slumber a surcease from martyrdom.”