It was, you see, the sort of easy talk one might hear
from fine-minded people anywhere. When we had done talking he came
to the door of the study with me and shook hands and went back to his
desk--with that gesture of return to work which is very familiar and
sympathetic to a writer, and with no gesture of regality at all.
Just to complete this impression let me repeat a pleasant story about
this king and our Prince of Wales, who recently visited the Italian
front. The Prince is a source of anxiety on these visits; he has a very
strong and very creditable desire to share the ordinary risks of war.
He is keenly interested, and unobtrusively bent upon getting as near
the fighting as line as possible. But the King of Italy was firm upon
keeping him out of anything more than the most incidental danger. "We
don't want any historical incidents here," he said. I think that might
well become an historical phrase. For the life of the Effigy is a series
of historical incidents.
6
Manifestly one might continue to multiply portraits of fine people
working upon this great task of breaking and ending the German
aggression, the German legend, the German effigy, and the effigy
business generally; the thesis being that the Allies have no effigy.
One might fill a thick volume with pictures of men up the scale and down
working loyally and devotedly upon the war, to make this point clear
that the essential king and the essential loyalty of our side is the
commonsense of mankind.
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