‘Oh, Walter, do they love as we do? Do you think, many of them
do?’
And he answered very softly:
‘Yes. Hundreds of thousands of them do.’
V
The next morning Walter walked over to Alston for more news.
He brought back more papers, but nothing definite besides. The
people in the town were talking about war, he said, telegrams
were put up outside the Town Hall. Two days later he went over
to Alston again. The exact moments at which it became credible,
probable, inevitable, that England would fight too, I cannot
remember at all.
The postman, who brought the post on Monday, stopped me at the
gate with news of the Advance into Belgium.
‘Two million Germans on the march,’ he said. He smiled a twisted
sort of smile, and added, ‘And I’m in the front line.’
It took me several moments to realize that he meant that he was
a reservist.