s breath with a jerk of contempt. It seemed to him
that neither Frances nor Anthony was listening to him. They were not
looking at him. They didn't want to listen; they didn't want to look at
him. He couldn't touch them; he couldn't evoke one single clear image in
their minds; there was no horror he could name that would sting them to
vision, to realization. They had not been there.

Dorothy and Michael and Nicky were listening. The three kids had
imagination; they could take it in. They stared as if he had brought
those horrors into the room. But even they missed the reality of it.
They saw everything he meant them to see, except him. It was as if they
were in the conspiracy to keep him out of it.

He glared at Frances and Anthony. What was the good of telling them, of
trying to make them realize it? If they'd only given some sign, made
some noise or some gesture, or looked at him, he might have spared them.
But the stiff, averted faces of Frances and Anthony annoyed him.

"And if you're a poor wretched Tommy like me, you'll have to sweat in a
brutal sun, hauling up cases of fizz from the railway up country to
Headquarters, with a thirst on you that frizzles your throat. You see
the stuff shining and spluttering, and you go mad. You could kill the
man if you were to see him drink it, when you know there's nothing for
_you_ but a bucket of green water with typhoid germs swimming about in
it. That's war.

"You think you're lucky if you're wounded and get bumped down in a
bullock wagon thirty miles to the base hospital. But the best thing you
can do then is to pop off. For if you get better they make you hospital
orderly. And the hospital orderly has to clean up all the muck of the
butcher's shop from morning to night. When you're so sick you can't
stand you get your supper, dry bread and bully beef. The bully beef
reminds you of things, and the bread--well, the bread's all nice and
white on the top. But when you turn it over on the other side--it's red.
That's war."

Frances looked at him. He thought: "At last she's turned; at last I've
touched her; she can realize that."

"Morrie dear, it must have been awful," she said. "It's _too_ awful. I
don't mind your telling me and Anthony about it; but I'd rather you did
it when the children aren't in the room."

"Is that all you think about? The children? The children. You don't care
a tinker's cuss about the war. You don't care a damn what happens to me
or anybody else