These old men, these fat
men, were breathing out fire and fury against the Hun, and vowing by
all their gods that they would see their last son die in the last
ditch rather than agree to any peace except that of destruction. There
were "fug committees" (it was Lord Kitchener's word) at the War
Office, the Board of Trade, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the
Ministry of Munitions, the Ministry of Information, where officials on
enormous salaries smoked cigars of costly brands and decided how to
spend vast sums of public money on "organization" which made no
difference to the man stifling his cough below the parapet in a wet
fog of Flanders, staring across No Man's Land for the beginning of a
German attack.
In all classes of people there was an epidemic of dancing, jazzing,
card-playing, theater-going. They were keeping their spirits up
wonderfully. Too well for men slouching about the streets of London on
leave, and wondering at all this gaiety, and thinking back to the
things they had seen and forward to the things they would have to do.
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