DULCE et decorum est pro patria mori. The
tag has been all but outworn during these
unending days of death; it has become
almost a cant phrase which the judicious shrink
from using. Yet to hundreds of thousands of
mourning men and women there has been nothing
but its truth to bring consolation. They are con-
scious of the supreme sacrifice and thereby are
ennobled. The cause in which they made it becomes
more sacred. The community of grief raises human
dignity. In England, at any rate, there are no
widows of Ashur. All are silent in their lamenta-
tions. You see little black worn in the public ways.
The Fenimores mourned for their only son, the idol
of their hearts; but the manifestation of their grief
was stoical compared with their unconcealed desola-
tion on the occasion of a tragedy that occurred the
year before.
Towards the end of the preceding June their
only daughter, Althea, had been drowned in the
canal. Here was a tragedy unrelieved, stupid,
useless. Here was no consoling knowledge of
glorious sacrifice; no dying for one's country.
There was no dismissing it with a heroic word that
caught in the throat.
I have not started out to write this little chronicle
of Wellingsford in order to weep over the pain of
the world. God knows there is in it an infinity of
beauty, fresh revelations of which are being every
day unfolded before my eyes.
Various seniors came up and passed the time of
day with me one or two were bald-headed
retired colonels of sixty, dressed in khaki, with belts
like equators on a terrestrial globe and with a cap-
tain's three stars on their sleeves. Gallant old
boys, full of gout and softness, they had sunk their
rank and taken whatever dull jobs, such as guard-
ing internment camps or railway bridges, the War
Office condescendingly thought fit to give them.
They listened sympathetically to my grievances, for
they had grievances of their own. When soldiers
have no grievances the Army will perish of smug
content.
"Why can't they give me a billet in the Army
Pay and let me release a man sounder of wind and
limb?" I asked. "What's the good of legs to a
man who sits on his hunkers all day in an office and
fills up Army forms? I hate seeing you lucky
fellows in uniform."
"We 're not a pretty sight," said the most rotund,
who was a wag in his way.
Then we discussed what we knew and what we
didn't know of the Battle of Ypres, and the with-
drawal of our Second Army, and shook our heads
dolorously over the casualty lists, every one of
which in those days contained the names of old
comrades and of old comrades' boys. And when
they had finished their coffee and mild. cigars they
went off well contented to their dull jobs and the
room began to thin. Other acquaintances on their
way out paused for a handshake and a word, and
I gathered scraps of information that had come
"straight from Kitchener," and felt wonderfully
wise and cheerful.
I SHRINK morbidly from visiting strange houses.
I shrink from the unknown discomforts and
trivial humiliations they may hold for me. I
hate, for instance, not to know what kind of a chair
may be provided for me to sit on. I hate to be
carried up many stairs even by my steel-crane of a
Marigold. Just try doing without your legs for
a couple of days, and you will see what I mean. Of
course I despise myself for such nervous apprehen-
sions, and do not allow them to influence my ac-
tions just as one, under heavy fire, does not
satisfy one's simple yearning to run away. I would
have given a year's income to be able to refuse
Boyce's request with a clear conscience; but I
could not. I shrank all the more because my visit
in the autumn to Reggie Dacre had shaken me
more than I cared to confess. It had been the only
occasion for years when I had entered a London
building other than my club. To the club, where
I was as much at home as in my own house, all
those in town with whom I now and then had to
transact business were good enough to come. This
penetration of strange hospitals was an agitating
adventure. Apart, however, from the mere physical
nervousness against which, as I say, I fought, there
was another element in my feelings with regard to
Boyce's summons. If I talk about the Iron Hand
of Fate you may think I am using a cliche of melo-
drama. Perhaps I am. But it expresses what I
mean. Something unregenerate in me, some linger-
ing atavistic savage instinct towards freedom
