human
It serves the married men right for calling the single men shirkers, George Oakleigh wrote.
gpt
Now that they've screwed themselves up to the point of attesting, they're trying to shirk in their turn.... Psychology is revealing itself curiously. Men who despise a Catholic for surrendering the right of private judgement are praying for the Government to order them about and relieve them of the responsibility of making up their own minds.... A thriving trade is being driven in rejection certificates. Your enterprising patriot with some physical defect gets himself duly turned down for the army; he then personates his more robust friends for a suitable fee, attending at their local recruiting offices under their names and pocketing any solatium that may be handed out at such times. It was hardly this spirit which sent Jim Loring and Raney out.... The whole wrangle is a great opportunity for our friend Beresford, but he is at least honest and intelligible; if conscription comes, he'll refuse to serve and the Government can shoot him. He was committed to a war without being consulted and he's not going to die of malaria in Salonica to please a House of Commons which he helped to return five years ago to carry the Parliament Bill.
human
I wanted to bang their heads together, uncle darling, my niece confided.
gpt
Will you believe it? They weren't on speaking terms for a week, until I made each apologise to the other. So ridiculous!...
human
There's a perfect crop of what my young cousin Laurie calls 'stunt-artists' of late, George wrote a week later.
gpt
Every third man in the House feels called on to do a 'stunt' of his own. There's a 'Ginger Stunt,' to keep the Government up to the mark, and an 'Air Stunt' to protect us from Zepps, and a 'Civil Liberties Stunt' to resist conscription, and a 'Conscription Stunt' to resist civil liberties, and a 'Press Stunt' to quash the Press Bureau, and a sort of 'Standing Stunt' to quash Northcliffe. Men of imaginative bent are turning their eyes to Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles, ready to start stunts there at the earliest opportunity and on the smallest provocation. Bertrand says that in all his experience he's never known the House so neurotic and out of hand. The cumulative effect is exceedingly bad. Whether the stunts do any good or not I can't say, but they destroy confidence in the Government, depress people at home and at the front, not to mention the allies, and ultimately they'll bring the Government down. Now, with the exception of Grayle, that's what no one wants to do. Asquith's the only man who can hold the country together, but he's so anxious--and rightly--to keep his team working harmoniously and to avoid any possibility of a split anywhere that I don't think he asserts himself enough. A party truce can be overdone, and a good many Liberals are saying that they are always sacrificed to conciliate someone else and never the other way about; as with Ireland--but I've no doubt your Irish-Americans have delicately hinted in the same sense.... By the way, I forgot to mention the 'Stop the War Stunt.' Since last I wrote Beresford has been had up and fined; at least he was ordered to pay the fine, but he refused; so they kept him in prison for a bit, and he hunger-struck and now he's at large again....