sunburned cheek, twining hands callous with work in the fields. A man
broke suddenly into the arbour behind Martin and stood flicking the
water off his uniform with his cap. His sand-coloured hair was wet and
was plastered in little spikes to his broad forehead, a forehead that
was the entablature of a determined rock-hewn face.

"Hello," said Martin, twisting his head to look at the newcomer. "You
section twenty-four?"

"Yes.... Ever read 'Alice in Wonderland'?" asked the wet man, sitting
down abruptly at the table.

"Yes, indeed."

"Doesn't this remind you of it?"

"What?"

"This war business. Why, I keep thinking I'm going to meet the rabbit
who put butter in his watch round every corner."

"It was the best butter."

"That's the hell of it."

"When's your section leaving here?" asked Martin, picking up the
conversation after a pause during which they'd both stared out into the
rain. They could hear almost constantly the grinding roar of camions on
the road behind the cafe and the slither of their wheels through the
mud-puddles where the road turned into the village.

"How the devil should I know?"

"Somebody had dope this morning that we'd leave here for Soissons
to-morrow." Martin's words tailed off into a convictionless mumble.

"It surely is different than you'd pictured it, isn't it, now?"

They sat looking at each other while the big drops from the leaky roof
smacked on the table or splashed cold in their faces.

"What do you think of all this, anyway?" said the wet man suddenly,
lowering his voice stealthily.

"I don't know. I never did expect it to be what we were taught to
believe.... Things aren't."

"But you can't have guessed that it was like this ... like Alice in
Wonderland, like an ill-intentioned Drury Lane pantomime, like all the
dusty futility of Barnum and Bailey's Circus."

"No, I thought it would be hair-raising," said Martin.

"Think, man, think of all the oceans of lies through all the ages that
must have been necessary to make this possible! Think of this new
particular vintage of lies that has been so industriously pumped out of
the press and the pulpit. Doesn't it stagger you?"

Martin nodded.

"Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living,
growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul.... And
the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't
they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?