Part 17 (1/2)
”Of course we shall! And what's more, we are going to derive a national benefit out of this war which will in itself be worth the price of admission!”
”How?” asked several voices.
Wagstaffe looked round the table. The Battalion were for the moment in Divisional Reserve, and consequently out of the trenches. Some one had received a box of Coronas from home, and the mess president had achieved a bottle of port. Hence the present symposium at Headquarters Mess. Wagstaffe's eyes twinkled.
”Will each officer present,” he said, ”kindly name his pet aversion among his fellow-creatures?”
”A person or a type?” asked Mr. Waddell cautiously.
”A type.”
Colonel Kemp led off.
”Male ballet-dancers,” he said.
”Fat, s.h.i.+ny men,” said Bobby Little, ”with walrus mustaches!”
”All conscientious objectors, pa.s.sive resisters, pacifists, and other cranks!” continued the orthodox Waddell.
”All people who go on strike during war-time,” said the Adjutant.
There was an approving murmur--then silence.
”Your contribution, M'Lachlan?” said Wagstaffe.
Angus, who had kept silence from shyness, suddenly blazed out:--
”I think,” he said, ”that the most contemptible people in the world to-day are those politicians and others who, in years gone by, systematically cried down anything in the shape of national defence or national inclination to personal service, because they saw there were no _votes_ in such a programme; and who _now_”--Angus's pa.s.sion rose to fever-heat,--”stand up and endeavour to cultivate popular favour by reviling the Ministry and the Army for want of preparedness and initiative. Such men do not deserve to live! Oh, sirs--”
But Angus's peroration was lost in a storm of applause.
”You are adjudged to have hit the bull's-eye, M'Lachlan,” said Colonel Kemp. ”But tell us, Wagstaffe, your exact object in compiling this horrible catalogue.”
”Certainly. It is this. Universal Service is a _fait accompli_ at last, or is shortly going to be--and without anything very much in the way of exemption either. When it comes, just think of it! All these delightful people whom we have been enumerating will have to toe the line at last. For the first time in their little lives they will learn the meaning of discipline, and fresh air, and _esprit de corps_. Isn't that worth a war? If the present sc.r.a.p can only be prolonged for another year, our country will receive a tonic which will carry it on for another century. Think of it! Great Britain, populated by men who have actually been outside their own parish; men who know that the whole is greater than the part; men who are too wide awake to go on doing just what the _Bandar-log_ tell them, and allow themselves to be used as stalking-horses for low-down political ramps! When _we_, going round in bath-chairs and on crutches, see that sight--well, I don't think we shall regret our missing arms and legs quite so much, Colonel. War is h.e.l.l, and all that; but there is one worse thing than a long war, and that is a long peace!”
”I wonder!” said Colonel Kemp reflectively. He was thinking of his wife and four children in distant Argylls.h.i.+re.
But the rapt att.i.tude and quickened breath of Temporary Captain Bobby Little endorsed every word that Major Wagstaffe had spoken. As he rolled into his ”flea-bag” that night, Bobby requoted to himself, for the hundredth time, a pa.s.sage from Shakespeare which had recently come to his notice. He was not a Shakespearian scholar, nor indeed a student of literature at all; but these lines had been sent to him, cut out of a daily almanac, by an equally unlettered and very adorable confidante at home:--
”And gentlemen in England now a-bed, Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day!”
Bobby was the sort of person who would thoroughly have enjoyed the Battle of Agincourt.
VIII
”THE NON-COMBATANT”
I