ALBERT.  What I wants ter know is ‘ow long the bleedin’ war’s a-goin’ ter last.  If it goes on much longer I’ll be potty if I ain’t a gone ’un.

JIM.  There’s only one way of ending it as I knows on.

ALBERT.  What’s that, matey?

JIM.  Put all the bleedin’ politicians on both sides in the bleedin’ trenches.  Give ’em a week’s bombardment, an’ send ’em away for a week to make peace, with a promise of a fortnight’s intense at the end of it if they’ve failed.  They’d find a way, sure enough.

ALBERT (admiringly).  Ah, that they would an’ all.  If old “Wait and See” ’ad been ’ere these last four days ’e wouldn’t talk about fightin’ to the last man!

JINKS.  Don’t talk stoopid.  ‘Oo began the bloomin’ war?  Don’t yer know what you’re fightin’ for?  D’you want ter leave the ‘Uns in France an’ Belgium an’ Serbia an’ all?  It ain’t fer us to make peace.  It’s fer the ‘Uns.  An’ if you are done in, you got to go under some day.  I ain’t sure as they ain’t the lucky ones what’s got it over and done with.  And arter all, it’s not us what’s not proper.  The ’Uns ’ave ’ad two fer our one.

ALBERT.  They got dug-outs as deep as ’ell, it don’t touch ’em.

JINKS. (but without conviction).  Don’t talk silly.

POZZIE.  Oi reckon we got to go through with it.  But they didn’t ought to give a chap short rations.  That’s what takes the ’eart out of a chap.

XI

LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN[2]

April 17, 1916.

Thank you very much for your letter of a week ago, which I should have tried to answer before if I had had time.  I am afraid that your confidence in me as an oracle will be severely shaken when I confess that I was once on the eve of being ordained, and that in the end I funked it because it seemed such an awfully difficult job, and I couldn’t see my way to going through with it.

[Footnote 2:  This chapter is the actual text of a letter from “A Student in Arms,” and like the most of the other chapters appeared originally in the Spectator.]

However, I must try to answer your letter as best I can, and I hope that you will not mind my speaking plainly what I think, and will remember that I do so in no spirit of superiority, but very humbly, as one who has funked the great work that you have had the pluck to take up, and who has even failed in the little bit of work that he himself did try and do.  This last means that I have no business to be an officer.  It was the biggest mistake in my life, for my position in the ranks did give me a hold on the fellows, the strength of which I have only realized since I left.

Now then to the point.  As I understand you, your difficulty is that you feel that you must devote yourself to strengthening a very few men who are already Churchmen, and to whom you can talk in the language of the Church of things which you know they want to hear about, or you must appeal to the crowd of those who are merely good fellows and often sad scamps too, who must be caught with buns and cinemas and who are very difficult to get any farther.