Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/225

Rh offered to this army. The sense of a personal grievance is a powerful backer for patriotism in keeping men at war—that, and the impossibility, as in this case, of seeing the result of your shilling a day labour. I wondered what these neat, gentlemanly figures would do, what they would say, if they could witness the death and the maiming and the tears sent forth from their clean and remote hands. Close-in fighting, it was clear, had nothing in common with artillery work. A temporary insanity of self-protection and retaliation lets a man look on what he has done without nausea and stark horror. In the faces of many soldiers you see an eventual understanding, an effort to stifle recollection.