As I went back up the lane a dark figure loomed out, and I heard the
click of a rifle-bolt. It was one of K.'s men, standing sentry outside
the camp.
"Who goes there?"
It was a cockney voice.
"Friends."
"Pass, friends. All's well."
Yes, all was well then, as far as human courage and the spirit of a
splendid youthfulness counted in that war of high explosives and
destructive chemistry. The fighting in front of these lads of the New
Army decided the fate of the world, and it was the valor of those
young soldiers who, in a little while, were flung into hell-fires and
killed in great numbers, which made all things different in the
philosophy of modern life. That concertina in the barn was playing the
music of an epic which will make those who sang it seem like heroes of
mythology to the future race which will read of this death-struggle in
Europe. Yet it was a cockney, perhaps from Clapham junction or Peckham
Rye, who said, like a voice of Fate, "All's well."
V
When the New Army first came out to learn their lessons in the
trenches in the long days before open warfare, the enemy had the best
of it in every way.
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