"Damn
their optimism!" said some of our officers. "It's too easy for those
behind the lines. It is only we who have the right of optimism. It's
we who have to do the dirty work! They seem to think we like the job!
What are they doing to bring the end nearer?"
The frightful suspicion entered the heads of some of our men (some of
those I knew) that at home people liked the war and were not anxious
to end it, and did not care a jot for the sufferings of the soldiers.
Many of them came back from seven days' leave fuming and sullen.
Everybody was having a good time. Munition-workers were earning
wonderful wages and spending them on gramophones, pianos, furs, and
the "pictures." Everybody was gadding about in a state of joyous
exultation. The painted flapper was making herself sick with the
sweets of life after office hours in government employ, where she did
little work for a lot of pocket-money. The society girl was dancing
bare-legged for "war charities," pushing into bazaars for the "poor,
dear wounded," getting her pictures into the papers as a "notable
warworker," married for the third time in three years; the middle-
class cousin was driving staff-officers to Whitehall, young gentlemen
of the Air Service to Hendon, junior secretaries to their luncheon.
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