Sussex (England) -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- England -- Fiction
“There’s Stacey Collbran, too, who left a young sweetheart, and ull
never know the love of wedded life because you had to be died for.
Do you ever think of him when your Wife lies in your bosom, and say,
‘Reckon I’ll be good to my wife, since for my sake a poor chap never
had his’?
“And there’s Fred Bourner, and Sid Viner, and Joe Kadwell, and Leslie
Ades—they all went out to die for you, and they died, and you come
here to remember them to-night; but in your hearts, which ought to
be breaking with reverence and gratitude, you’re just saying, ‘It’s
proper, it’s expedient that these men should die for the people, that
the whole nation perish not.’
“And there’s my boy....”
The minister’s voice hung paused for a minute. He leaned over the
pulpit, his hands gripping the wood till their knuckles stood out
white from the coarse brown. His eyes travelled up and down the
pew-pods of staring heads, as if he expected to see contradiction or
mockery or surprise. But the Sunday Street face is not expressive,
and except for the utter stillness, Mr. Sumption might have been
reading the chapel accounts.
“There’s my boy, Jerry Sumption; Maybe you thought I wouldn’t talk of
him to-night, that I’d be ashamed, that I’d never dare mention his
name along of your gallant boys. Besides, you say, What’s he got to
do with it? He never died for the people. But you thought wrong. I’m
not ashamed to speak his name along of Tom and Stace and Fred and
Sid and Joe, and he hasn’t got nothing to do with it, either. For I
tell you—_my boy died for_ _your boys_. He died as an example and
warning to them, to save them from a like fate, and if that isn’t
dying for them.... These are Mr. Archie Lamb’s very words: ‘Your son
is dying so that other men may be warned by his fate and stick to the
ranks and do their duty as soldiers; therefore, in that sense he has
died for his country.’ I reckon it seems a big thing to shoot a boy
just for going off to see his girl when the company’s marching; but
if it weren’t done then other boys ud stop away and the regiment go
to pieces. Mr. Archie and the other officers said, ‘It is expedient
that one man should die for the regiment, that the whole army perish
not.’...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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