"Yes. I know you were," he said. "Yes, I know you were. But I think it'll blow over now that Mr. Westbury's taken this turn he has." "Mr. Westbury? Yes, I remember. What turn has he taken?" "Well, sir, as a matter of fact, that's what some of us is waiting to hear," he replied. II From the point of view of my profession the story he told me was not without interest. I give it for what it may be worth, not as an instance of mental abnormality, but merely as it bore on our Case. I have said that Westbury was about thirty-five, which means that he was still under thirty when the war broke out. It is no man's business, certainly not mine, to enter into the question whether he should or could have joined up, nor whether he would have been of much use if he had. His interest to me lies in the fact that he did not. For all I know he may have been of far greater use to his country in his brown check than in a khaki jacket, for his experience of his complicated profession was considerable, and I understand that he became a person of some little temporary importance when the commandeering of hotels and other properties got fairly into swing. Therefore he did not attest under the Derby Scheme, and his subsequent applications for exemption were allowed. I repeat, I wish to be perfectly fair to him. During a few London air-raids he probably saw as much of the actuality of war as many thousands of uniformed men who spent their year or two years "in France." We see these things a little more clearly now. "In France" may mean much or it may mean very little. Of our millions, I have been informed that only about eight per cent. went "over the top," and that this eight per cent. consisted largely of the same men over and over again. Later the gunners' casualties approached those of the infantry, and I believe there was a time when the losses of the Flying Corps were twenty per cent. per week. Granted that there was no arm that did not suffer its proportion of loss; but--we know now by whom the brunt of the fighting was borne. Mr. Harry Westbury may claim, if he wishes, that he did as much of it as many and many another whose allowances were credited to them at Cox's. But there was a strain of resentment in his nature, by no means uncommon among his kind save that he experienced it in an uncommon degree. I myself had heard him say of our flyers, "They're paid for it, aren't they--they know the risks, don't they?" but it went much further than that. According to Dadley, he showed suspicion and mistrust towards any who had given an eye, a limb or life itself. He seemed to think that in some obscure way these people had wronged him. And, Dadley went on, in some cases this mistrust became positive dislike and hate.