human
The wheel has swung the full circle now, said George one night.
gpt
I was up before a board to-day. The doctors seemed to feel that it was a personal score for them that my eyes weren't bad enough for me to be rejected; but, when they came to my heart, they were quite indignant. They _couldn't_ pass me on that, but it was a personal grievance and I shouldn't have been a bit surprised if they'd tested me to see if I'd been chewing cordite.... I suppose it's not to be wondered at; I'm _not_ as keen to go out as I was two and a half years ago; I shouldn't be keen at all, if it wasn't for the feeling that I'm left, that all my friends have been killed.... And they must get men from somewhere. This Russian revolution is a very fine and hopeful thing in itself, but the Russians are so much absorbed in it that they can't spare time to bother about the war, and the Germans are withdrawing the best part of their troops from the East. _I_ don't know where you're going to get men from. The papers keep yapping about Ireland, but I wonder how many of their inspired leader-writers know anything about the country.
human
If Germany threw up the sponge to-morrow! George began one night,
gpt
It can't be quite the same after so universal a shake-up,
human
In the early days, when men of our class were enlisting as privates, even lately, when rankers were getting commissions, I used to think that some of our social angles would be rubbed off, but just you have five minutes' talk with an Old Army officer about the 'temporary gentlemen' in his battalion, who've been fighting side by side with him, mark you! While you're on the desert island, your Admirable Crichton may come to the top, but once get him back in London with a drawing-room _and_ a servants' hall!... I agree in theory with people like Raney, who say we must get value for the lives we're spending, but I can't do it! Nobody can do it. The men out there who are paying the price want to forget about the whole thing, they'll come home at the end as they come home now on leave, to attend to their own affairs, to enjoy themselves, to make up for lost time and recapture the years they've wasted in the trenches. And the people who've never been out have forgotten all the old good resolutions; they're as tired of the war as the soldiers, tired of drudgery, discomfort, economising; they want to forget it and enjoy themselves and get back to the old life. Frankly, Stornaway, it still makes you sick to hear of the way our prisoners are treated and that sort of thing, but you don't any longer regard this war as a crusade, do you? There's too much eighteenth-century diplomacy about it, too many compensations, too much balance of power. It was one thing to send a forlorn hope to Belgium, one thing to say that the German military machine must be broken, but when it comes to conscribing men to coerce Greece or win Constantinople for Russia ... I wonder when the accursed things _will_ end.