"I think," he said, "that the most contemptible people in the world
to-day are those politicians and others who, in years gone by,
systematically cried down anything in the shape of national defence or
national inclination to personal service, because they saw there were
no _votes_ in such a programme; and who _now_"--Angus's passion rose
to fever-heat,--"stand up and endeavour to cultivate popular favour
by reviling the Ministry and the Army for want of preparedness and
initiative. Such men do not deserve to live! Oh, sirs--"
But Angus's peroration was lost in a storm of applause.
"You are adjudged to have hit the bull's-eye, M'Lachlan," said Colonel
Kemp. "But tell us, Wagstaffe, your exact object in compiling this
horrible catalogue."
"Certainly. It is this. Universal Service is a _fait accompli_ at
last, or is shortly going to be--and without anything very much in the
way of exemption either. When it comes, just think of it! All these
delightful people whom we have been enumerating will have to toe the
line at last. For the first time in their little lives they will learn
the meaning of discipline, and fresh air, and _ésprit de corps_. Isn't
that worth a war? If the present scrap can only be prolonged for
another year, our country will receive a tonic which will carry it on
for another century. Think of it! Great Britain, populated by men who
have actually been outside their own parish; men who know that the
whole is greater than the part; men who are too wide awake to go on
doing just what the _Bandar-log_ tell them, and allow themselves to be
used as stalking-horses for low-down political ramps! When _we_, going
round in bath-chairs and on crutches, see that sight--well, I don't
think we shall regret our missing arms and legs quite so much,
Colonel. War is Hell, and all that; but there is one worse thing than
a long war, and that is a long peace!"
"I wonder!" said Colonel Kemp reflectively. He was thinking of his
wife and four children in distant Argyllshire.
But the rapt attitude and quickened breath of Temporary Captain Bobby
Little endorsed every word that Major Wagstaffe had spoken. As he
rolled into his "flea-bag" that night, Bobby requoted to himself, for
the hundredth time, a passage from Shakespeare which had recently
come to his notice. He was not a Shakespearian scholar, nor indeed a
student of literature at all; but these lines had been sent to him,
cut out of a daily almanac, by an equally unlettered and very adorable
confidante at home:--
"And gentlemen in England now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day!"
Bobby was the sort of person who would thoroughly have enjoyed the
Battle of Agincourt.