Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/304

246 people were facing the greatest crisis in their history.

'In New York,' said he, 'there are crowds all day outside the newspaper offices waiting to see the latest news thrown on to a big screen, but there 's nothing of that here. I 've been around your big newspaper offices and there 's nothing doing...no crowds; people just going by about their business as if there was nothing to worry about. It 's fine. I believe we are more excited over it all than you are in little old England. You seem to take it for granted that however much things go wrong at the moment they are bound to go right for you in the finish. I like that confidence. It looks like indifference, but it isn't; you 've only got to scratch the surface a little and you find there 's no indifference underneath. I 'm a mixture of three or four nations, I suppose, but since I 've been here I 'm glad I 'm partly English.'

I remember how he gloried in the posters that were then calling from all our walls and hoardings, appealing for recruits; he