It is as if everyone said, "We will
have no more catarrh," or "no more flies," or "no more east wind." And
my point is that the immense sorrows at home in every European country
and the vast boredom of the combatants are probably not really producing
any effective remedial mental action at all, and will not do so unless
we get much more thoroughly to work upon the thinking-out process.
In such talks as I could get with men close up to the front I found
beyond this great boredom and attempts at distraction only very
specialised talk about changes in the future. Men were keen upon
questions of army promotion, of the future of conscription, of the
future of the temporary officer, upon the education of boys in relation
to army needs. But the war itself was bearing them all upon its way,
as unquestioned and uncontrolled as if it were the planet on which they
lived.
II. THE YIELDING PACIFIST AND THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
1 Among the minor topics that people are talking about behind the
western fronts is the psychology of the Yielding Pacifist and the
Conscientious Objector. Of course, we are all pacifists nowadays; I know
of no one who does not want not only to end this war but to put an end
to war altogether, except those blood-red terrors Count Reventlow, Mr.
Leo Maxse--how he does it on a vegetarian dietary I cannot imagine!--and
our wild-eyed desperados of _The Morning Post.
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