He knew that if he was really ever summoned to any service, and finally violated, he would be broken, and die. But patience. In the meanwhile he went to see his people: the long journey up the west, changing at Plymouth and Bristol and Birmingham, up to Derby. Glamorous west of England: if a man were free. He sat through the whole day, very still, looking at the world. Very still, gone very far inside himself, travelling through this England in spring. He loved it so much. But it was in the grip of something monstrous, not English, and he was almost gripped too. As it was, by making himself far away inside himself, he contained himself, and was still. He arrived late in Derby: Saturday night, and no train for the next ten miles. But luckily, there was a motor-bus going out to the outlying villages. Derby was very dark, like a savage town, a feeling of savagery. And at last the ’bus was ready: full of young miners, more or less intoxicated. The ’bus was crammed, a solid jam of men, sitting on each other’s knees, standing blocked and wedged. There was no outside accommodation. And inside were jammed eighteen more men than was allowed. It was like being pressed into one block of corned beef. The ’bus ran six miles without stopping, through an absolutely dark country, Zeppelin black, and having one feeble light of its own. The roads were unmended, and very bad. But the ’bus charged on, madly, at full speed, like a dim consciousness madly charging through the night. And the mass of colliers swayed with the ’bus, intoxicated into a living block, and with high, loud, wailing voices they sang: “There’s a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams-- Where the nightingales are singing and the----” This ghastly trailing song, like death itself. The colliers seemed to tear it out of their bowels, in a long, wild chant. They, too, all loathed the war: loathed it. And this awful song! They subsided, and somebody started “Tipperary.” “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, It’s a long way to go----” But Tipperary was already felt as something of a Jonah: a bad-luck song, so it did not last long. The miserable songs--with their long, long ways that ended in sheer lugubriousness: real death-wails! These for battle songs. The wail of a dying humanity. Somebody started: “Good-bye--eeee Don’t cry--eee Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye--eee-- For it’s hard to part I know. I’ll--be--tickled-to-death to go, Good-bye--eeee Don’t cry--eee--” But the others didn’t know this ragtime, and they weren’t yet in the mood. They drifted drunkenly back to the ineffable howl of “There’s a long, long trail----”