human
I suppose the pace was too hot, George observed gloomily.
gpt
But in those first weeks.... They may not have known what they were going out to face, but they went like good 'uns; and the people who stayed behind were ready for any sort of sacrifice of money, comfort, leisure. All the spiritual fervour seems to go now in trying to make _other_ people do things, keeping _other_ people up to the mark.... God! I'm sick of the press agitations, I'm sick of all this political intrigue, I suppose I'm sick of the war.
human
I don't ask anyone to listen to me, George went on with unwonted bitterness,
gpt
But we couldn't keep out of it, George,
human
And precious little good we've done by going in. I suppose we _have_ stopped Germany from dominating Europe, but, as for our own honour, we offered that up on the altar of necessity when we found that we were fighting a nation that meant to win if it darned well could. Our later policy's become frankly imperialistic; there's no ethical connection between Belgian neutrality and the partition of Turkey and Austria. I'm afraid I've taken a deuced long time to see it.... He turned to me with a scornful smile.
gpt
Do you remember when you first came back to England? When we met outside the Admiralty?
human
I've often thought of that conversation,
gpt
Everything seemed to follow so naturally in those days, he sighed.
human
Disarmament, nationality, a tribunal to arbitrate between states. Raney, you were one of the most persistent optimists I've had the ill-luck to meet; you're not going to pretend that the entire thing's not the most futile, gigantic waste ... whole peoples in arms hacking themselves to death and not a damned thing gained! _You_ don't think we're going to win this war?
gpt
I don't know if anybody's going to win, he answered.
human
And, what's more, I don't greatly care.
gpt
If you were back in August, '14?
human
I'd go through it again,
gpt
The big thing about this war is quite independent of results, O'Rane explained.
human
It's the effect on the individual, the effort, the risk, the readiness to make sacrifice. I always hold that there's no room in life for compromise. You know that, don't you, George? He held out his hand and pulled George on to the arm of his chair.
gpt
From the days when we were at Melton together. You and dear old Jim Loring and Tom Dainton--dear God! how this war has killed them off!--you used to thrash me, you brutes, to make me see that I must compromise, but you never won. And always before the war I thought that compromise--what I call moral cowardice and spiritual slovenliness--was the only thing that people minded about. They didn't _care_. It wasn't their _business_! If the world was cruel and licentious or base-minded, they always asked me to remember that human nature was human nature. He sprang up with a sudden wriggle as though he were jerking an incubus from his shoulders.
human
As a nation we were contented with the second-rate--compromise, toleration, ease; we were second-rate in life, art, politics, second-rate in humanity, in soul.... And then there came the war--and it was the big moment when we had to decide whether to fight our way through the flames or to stand in distant security and explain to the reporters that there was a child, sure enough, in the top storey, but that it would be suicide to attempt a rescue and what was the fire brigade for, anyway?... We had to decide, we had to make up our minds that there was something big enough to suffer and sacrifice ourselves for.... All of us who went out there thought, rightly or wrongly, that we'd found something that admitted of no compromise.... Even if you went out of bravado, like poor Val Arden, so as not to be thought a funk.... What it was--I don't quite know ... he went on slowly.
gpt
I doubt if any of us know, and we certainly didn't at the time. Perhaps it was for the security of the people at home.... I know I was seeing red, I'd have slit the throats of German women and children at that time--in revenge for what they did in Belgium.... But before that started, before war was declared.... You remember that last week-end of the Saturnia regna, George? When we walked up and down, up and down at Loring Castle, wondering whether there was anything worth saving.... Well, whenever I catch myself feeling as you do now, I recall that about four million men voluntarily decided that there was something in life better than their own lives, something that had to be preserved, something that ruled out all compromise. That's the moral value of war. After all, what is it you do when you run into the flames and rescue the kiddie from the top storey? You save its life, I admit, and that's something, if you value human life, but the child may die a week later of whooping-cough, it may grow into a drunkard, an imbecile, a criminal. What matters it that you've taken yourself, your own soul, and given it a value?... When this is all over, if we lose, if we're bankrupt and broken, if Germany enchains us like so many tribes of African blacks, it still doesn't matter to the men who refused to compromise, they've made themselves.... Yes, quite deliberately, I'd--go through it--all--again.... And, when the war's over, we can't afford to tolerate anything but the best, we haven't been fighting for the second-rate. And we've got to prepare our own minds for that now, so that the material changes follow automatically. You must start with the individual, your _own_ relationship to the world in all its aspects. Hanging for sheep-stealing ceased automatically when the public mind had prepared itself, stirred itself up to say 'This has got to _stop_!' and the compromisers, the obscurantists, the vested interests daren't raise their heads. You think, perhaps, that I'm not the best person to decry the usefulness of compromise----