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. Millions of girls were in
some kind of fancy dress with buttons and shoulder--straps, breeches and
puttees, and they seemed to be making a game of the war and enjoying it
thoroughly. Oxford dons were harvesting, and proud of their prowess with
the pitchfork--behold their patriotism!--while the boys were being blown
to bits on the Yser Canal. Miners were striking for more wages, factory
hands were downing tools for fewer hours at higher pay, the government
was paying any price for any labor--while Tommy Atkins drew his
one-and-twopence and made a little go a long way in a wayside estaminet
before jogging up the Menin road to have his head blown off. The
government had created a world of parasites and placemen housed
in enormous hotels, where they were engaged at large salaries upon
mysterious unproductive labors which seemed to have no result in
front-line trenches. Government contractors were growing fat on the life
of war, amassing vast fortunes, juggling with excess profits, battening
upon the flesh and blood of boyhood in the fighting-lines. 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