went into Germany, some of us. They fed us in some of their messes.
Do you know, those chaps in those messes there talked about fighting us
as naturally and as certainly as you talk with your opponents about a
coming footer match. They talked about 'When we fight you'--not '_if_ we
fight you'--'when', as if it was as fixed as Christmas. And they didn't
talk any of this bilge about fighting us in England; they knew, as I
know, and every soldier knows--every soldier who's keen--that it's going
to be out there. In Europe." He had not taken two puffs at his cigarette
before he wrenched it from his mouth and dashed it after the match.
"Sabre, why the hell aren't people here told that? Why are they stuck up
with this rot about defending their shores when they can see for
themselves that only the Navy can defend their shores? What are they
going to do when the war comes? Are they going to lynch these bloody
politicians who haven't told them they've got to fight for their lives?
Are they going to turn around and say they never knew it so they'll be
damned if they'll fight for their lives? Are they going to follow any of
these politicians who will have betrayed them? Do you suppose any man
who's been party to this betrayal is going to be found big enough to run
a war? I tell you that's another thing. Do you suppose a chap who's
been a miserable vote-snatcher all his life is going to turn round
suddenly and be a heaven-sent administrator in a war? You can take your
oath Heaven doesn't send out geniuses on that ticket. What you've lived
and done in fat times--that's what you're going to live and do in lean.
Heaven's chucked stocking divine fire."

"I'm with you there," Sabre said. He did not believe half this intense
man said, but he conceived a sudden and great admiration for his
intensity. And he had had no idea that a soldier ever thought so far
away from his own subject--which was sport and one chance in a million
of fighting--as to produce aphorisms on habit and development. "But you
know, Otway," he said, "it's jolly hard to believe all this
inevitableness of war stuff that chaps like you put up. Do you read the
articles in the reviews and the quarterlies? They all pretty well prove
that, apart from anything else, a big European war is impossible by
the--well, by the sheer bigness of the thing. They say these modern
gigantic armies couldn't operate, couldn't provision themselves. And
there's the finance. They prove you can't