tter press.

'I dare say,' thought Jane. Knitting socks and packing stores and
learning first aid. Who wanted to do things like that, when their
brothers had a chance to go and fight in France? Men wouldn't stand it,
if it was the other way round. Why should women always get the dull jobs?
It was because they bore them cheerfully; because they didn't really, for
the most part, mind, Jane decided, watching the attitude of her mother
and Clare. The twins, profoundly selfish, but loving adventure and
placidly untroubled by nerves or the prospect of physical danger, saw no
hardship in active service. (This was before the first winter and the
development of trench warfare, and people pictured to themselves
skirmishes in the open, exposed to missiles, but at least keeping warm).

2

Every one one knew was going. Johnny said to Jane, 'War is beastly, but
one's got to be in it.' He took that line, as so many others did. 'Juke's
going,' he said. 'As a combatant, I mean, not a padre. He thinks the war
could have been prevented with a little intelligence; so it could, I dare
say; but as there wasn't a little intelligence and it wasn't prevented,
he's going in. He says it will be useful experience for him--help him in
his profession; he doesn't believe in parsons standing outside things and
only doing soft jobs. I agree with him. Every one ought to go.'

'Every one can't,' said Jane morosely.

But to Johnny every one meant all young men, and he took no heed.

Gideon went. It might, he said to Juke, be a capitalists' war or any one
else's; the important thing was not whose war it was but who was going
to win it.

He added, 'Great Britain is, on this occasion, on the right side.
There's no manner of doubt about it. But even if she wasn't, it's
important for all her inhabitants that she should be on the winning
side.... Oh, she will be, no doubt, we've the advantage in numbers and
wealth, if not in military organisation or talent.... If only the
Potterites wouldn't jabber so. It's a unique opportunity for them, and
they're taking it. What makes me angriest is the reasons they vamp up
why we're fighting. For the sake of democracy, they say. Democracy be
hanged. It's a rotten system, anyhow, and how this war is going to do
anything for it I don't know. If I thought it was, I wouldn't join. But
there's no fear. And other people say we're fighting "so that our
children won't have to." Rot again. Every war makes other wars more
l