"And the noble procession of poor devils tramping through the slush from their burning homes, God knows whither! And the light of fire appearing through the cracks of falling walls, and charred bits of old people in the slush of the roadside, and the screams of men disembowelled, and the crying of a dying baby, in a wet shed full of starving refugees who do not know whither to go. Go on, Wilkins." "Oh, if you choose to dwell on the horrors----!" "The one decent thing that we men who sit at home in the warm can do is to dwell on the horrors and do our little best to make sure that never, never shall this thing happen again. And that won't be done, Wilkins, by leaving War alone. War, war with modern machines, is a damned great horrible trampling monster, a filthy thing, an indecency; we aren't doing anything heroic, we are trying to lift a foul stupidity off the earth, we are engaged in a colossal sanitary job. These men who go for us into the trenches, they come back with no illusions. They know how dirty and monstrous it is. They are like men who have gone down for the sake of the people they love to clear out a choked drain. They have no illusions about being glorified. They only hope they aren't blood-poisoned and their bodies altogether ruined. And as for the bracing stir of it, they tell me, Wilkins, that their favourite song now in the trenches is-- "'Nobody knows how bored we are, Bored we are, Bored we are, Nobody knows how bored we are, And nobody seems to care.' Meanwhile you sit at home and feel vicariously ennobled." He laid his hand on a daily newspaper beside him. "Oh, you're not the only one. I will make you ashamed of yourself, Wilkins. Here's the superlative to your positive. Here's the sort of man I should like to hold for five minutes head downwards in the bilge of a trench, writing on the Heroic Spirit in the _Morning Post_. He's one of your gentlemen who sit in a room full of books and promise themselves much moral benefit from the bloodshed in France. Coleridge, he says, Coleridge--the heroic, self-controlled Spartan Coleridge was of his opinion and very hard on Pacificism--Coleridge complained of peace-time in such words as these: 'All individual dignity and power, engulfed in courts, committees, institutions.... One benefit-club for mutual flattery.'... And then, I suppose, the old loafer went off to sponge on somebody.... And here's the stuff the heroic, spirited Osborn, the _Morning Post_ gentleman--unhappily not a German, and unhappily too old for trench work--quotes with delight now--_now!_--after Belgium!-- "'My spear, my sword, my shaggy shield! With these I till, with these I sow, With these I reap my harvest field-- No other wealth the gods bestow: With these I plant the fertile vine, With these I press the luscious wine.