at does it look
like? Tell us!"

We have been out here for the best part of five months now. Leave
opened a fortnight ago, amid acclamations--only to be closed again
within a few days. Wagstaffe was one of the lucky few who slipped
through the blessed portals. He now sips his beer and delivers his
report.

"London is much as usual. A bit rattled over Zeppelins--they have
turned out even more street lamps--but nothing to signify. Country
districts crawling with troops. All the officers appear to be
colonels. Promotion at home is more rapid than out here. Chin, chin!"
Wagstaffe buries his face in his glass mug.

"What is the general attitude," asked Mr. Waddell, "towards the war?"

"Well, one's own friends are down in the dumps. Of course it's only
natural, because most of them are in mourning. Our losses are much
more noticeable at home than abroad, somehow. People seemed quite
surprised when I told them that things out here are as right as rain,
and that our troops are simply tumbling over one another, and that we
don't require any comic M.P.'s sent out to cheer us up. The fact is,
some people read the papers too much. At the present moment the London
press is, not to put too fine a point on it, making a holy show of
itself. I suppose there's some low-down political rig at the back of
it all, but the whole business must be perfect jam for the Bosches in
Berlin."

"What's the trouble?" inquired Major Kemp.

"Conscription, mostly. (Though why they should worry their little
heads about it, I don't know. If K. wants it we'll have it: if not,
we won't; so that's that!) Both sides are trying to drag the
great British Public into the scrap by the back of the neck. The
Conscription crowd, with whom one would naturally side if they
would play the game, seem to be out to unseat the Government as a
preliminary. They support their arguments by stating that the British
Army on the Western front is reduced to a few platoons, and that
they are allowed to fire one shell per day. At least, that's what I
gathered."

"What do the other side say?" inquired Kemp.

"Oh, theirs is a very simple line of argument. They state, quite
simply, that if the personal liberty of Britain's workers--that
doesn't mean you and me, as you might think: we are the Overbearing
Militarist Oligarchy: a worker is a man who goes on strike,--they say
that if the personal liberty of these sacred perishers is interfered
with by the Overbearing Militarist