“I’ll tell you the truth about yourselves; I’ll tell you if you’re worth dying for. What has this War meant to you? What have you done for this War? There’s just one answer to both questions. Nothing. While men were fighting for their own and your existence, while they were suffering horrors out there in France which you can’t think of, and if you could think of could not speak of, you were just muddling about there in your little ways, thinking of nothing but crops and prices and the little silly inconveniences you had to put up with. Ho! I reckon you never thought of the War, except when you got some cheery letter from your boy, telling you he was having the time of his life out there, or when the price of bread went up, or you had to eat margarine instead of butter, or you couldn’t get your Sunday joint. All that war meant to you was new orders about lights, and tribunals taking your farm-hands, and prices going up and food getting scarce, and the War Agricultural Committee leaving Cultivation orders. And all the time you grumbled and groused, and wrote out to your boys that you were dying of want, weakening their hearts—they who wrote you kind and cheery letters out of the gates of hell. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You little, little souls, that only bother about the little concerns of your little parish in the middle of this great woe. The end of the world is come, and you know it not; Christ is dying for you and you heed Him not. Are you worth dying for? Are you worth living for? No—you’re scarce worth preaching at.” By this time there were signs of animation among the pea-pods. The peas rolled from side to side, and a faint rustle of indignation came from them.