that is not us, an England that is nobler
than common report and common speech. Think of the contempt and anger of
the better end of London just before the War, when, at the other end, the
people of Dockland revolted and defied their masters! I knew one mother
in that obscure host of ignorant humanity in revolt. Two of her infants
were slowly fading, and she herself was dying of starvation, yet she
refused the entrance of charity at her door, and dared her man to
surrender. He died later at Ypres. He died because of that very quality
of his which moved his masters and superiors to anger; he refused at
Ypres, as he did in Dockland, like those who were with him and were of
his kind, to do more than mock defeat when it faced him.

That figure of Nobody in sodden khaki, cumbered with ugly gear, its
precious rifle wrapped in rags, no brightness anywhere about it except
the light of its eyes (did those eyes mock us, did they reproach us, when
they looked into ours in Flanders?), its face seamed with lines which
might have been dolorous, which might have been ironic, with the sweat
running from under its steel casque, looms now in the memory, huge,
statuesque, silent but questioning, like an overshadowing challenge, like
a gigantic legendary form charged with tragedy and drama; and its eyes,
seen in memory again, search us in privacy. Yet that figure was the
"Cuthbert." It was derided by those onlookers who were not fit to kneel
and touch its muddy boots. It broke the Hindenburg Line. Its body was
thrown to fill the trenches it had won, and was the bridge across which
our impatient guns drove in pursuit of the enemy.

What is that figure now? An unspoken thought, which charges such names as
Bullecourt, Cambrai, Bapaume, Croiselles, Hooge, and a hundred more, with
the sound and premonition of a vision of midnight and all unutterable
things. We see it in a desolation of the mind, a shape forlorn against
the alien light of the setting of a day of dread, the ghost of what was
fair, but was broken, and is lost.

XVII. Bookworms

JANUARY 18, 1919. In Fleet Street yesterday there was at lunch with us an
American Army officer who discoursed heartily about a certain literary
public-house. He quoted a long passage from Dickens showing how somebody
took various turnings near Fetter Lane, easily to be recognized, till
they arrived at this very tavern. Such enthusiasm is admirable, yet
embarrassing. In return, I inquired after