The Red Planet

d Marigold, the next morning, as

ade no reference the night be

8.30 tra

be other trains proceeding from the station in the opposite direction but nobo

you find

ccur in Wellingsford without it being known at once to vanmen and postmen and barbers and servants and masters and mistresses? How could a man hope to

er of those repairs was so p

t of it,

think of it, she couldn't imagine how he got the news, for the post did not arrive till eight o'clock, and Mary said no telegram had been delivered and there had been no call on the telephone. But she supposed the War Office had secret ways of communicating with officers which it would not be well to make known. The whole of this war, with its killing off of the sons of the best families in the land, and the sleeping in the mud with one's boots on, to say nothing of not being able to change for dinner, and the way in which they knew when to shoot and when not to shoot, was all so mysterious that she had long ago given up hope of understanding any of its details. All she could do was to pray God that her dear boy should be spared. At any rate, she knew the duty of an English mother when the country was in danger; so she had sent him away with

and poured into my ear all the anguish of her simple heart. In an abstracted, anxious w

e war. She made some remark deliciously inept-I wish I could remember it. I made a sly rejoind

was young. But if Leonard should be killed in the war-I think of it night and day-what I should like to do wo

ort of sympat

inly should,

uld move from this confounded chai

te and delicate, coarse and toil-worn, do not de

swaying backwards and forwards as they get by heart meaningless bits of the Koran, are not sent out into life more inadequately armed with elementary educational weapons than are English children. Our state of education has nominally been systematised for forty-five years, and yet now in our hospitals we have splendid young fellows in their early twenties who can neither read nor write. I have talked with them. I have read to them. I have written letters for them. Clean

l-say a volume of W. W. Jacobs, the writer who above all others has conferred the precious boon of laughter on our wounded-but to whom the intellectual strain of following the significance o

hat a house divided against itself cannot stand. And yet we regard this internecine conflict b

numb. A few clever ones, at the cost of enormously expensive machinery, are sent to the universities, where they learn how to teach others the important things whereby they achieved their own unimportant success. The shining lights are those whom we turn out as syndicalist leaders an

centred round such questions as whether the story of Joseph and his Brethren and the Parable of the Prodigal Son should be taught to little Baptists by a Church of England teacher, and what proportion of rates paid by Church of England ratepayers should go to giv

f Education itself. If the War can teach us any lessons, as a nation-and sometimes I doubt whether it

bout. All they know is that we are fighting Germans, who for some incomprehensible reason have declared themselves to be our enemies; that the Germans, by hearsay accounts, are dreadful people who stick babies on bayonets and drop bombs on women and children. They really know little mor

nge of her ideas. Her boy is fighting for England. She would be ashamed if he were not. Were she a man she would fight too. He has gone "with a good 'eart"-the stereotyped phrase with which every English private soldier, tongue-tied, hides the expression of his unconquerable soul. How many times ha

OMAS ATKINS 1ST

WITH A G

hed out suddenly before me an elderly Jeanne d'Arc. That to me Leonard Boyce was suspect did not enter at all into the question. To her-and that was all that mattered-he was Sir Galahad, Lancelot, King Arthur, Bayard, St. George, Hector, Lysander, Miltiades, all rolled into one. The passion of her life was spent on him. To

eat Britain and Ireland-the women of the far-flu

chair in readiness. I think he feels, dear fellow, that he and I are keeping our end up; that, although there are only bits of us left, we are there by inalienable right as part and parcel of the British Army-none of your Territorials or Kitcheners, but the old original British Army whose prestige and honour were those of his own straight soul. The Hall Porter is an ex-Sergeant-Major, and he and Marigold are old acquaintances, and the meeting of the tw

andwich-man, every fine young fellow in khaki, every car-load of men in blue hospital uniform. I love the smell of London, the cinematographic picture of London, the

ent to myself involves such a fussification, and such an unauthorised clai

what matter? When a man tells me that his cousin knows a man attached as liaison officer to the staff of General Joffre, who has given out confidentially that such and such a thing is going to happen I am all ears. I feel that I am sucked into the great whirlpool of Vast Events. I

y elderly, in mufti; and from their gilt frames the full-length portraits of departed men of war in gorgeous uniforms looked down superciliously on their more sadly attired descendants. I got into a corner by the door, so as to be out of

in's three stars on their sleeves. Gallant old boys, full of gout and softness, they had sunk their rank and taken whatever dull jobs, such as guarding internment camps or railway bridges, the War Off

ind and limb?" I asked. "What's the good of legs to a man who sits on his hunkers all

," said the most rotund,

hose days contained the names of old comrades and of old comrades' boys. And when they had finished their coffee and mild cigars they went off well contented to their dull jobs and the room began t

ght towards me with that supple, easy stride that only years of confident command can give. He had keen blue eyes and a pleasant bronzed

r Meredyth,

," s

But my name's Dacre-Reggie Dacre, brother of Joh

out m

me to a hospital. Do sit down

eneral Donovan, a sort of god-father of mine. He told me who

the sling. Badly hurt? No, a bit of flesh torn by shrapnel. Bone, thank God, not touched. It was only horny-headed idiots like the British R. A. M. C. that would send a man home fo

be alive

for ever like

uld rather die than commit the indelica

n't been

bout a fortnight after I saw you. Johnnie was st

ill-fortune, and handed me h

mind for months,"

I

e. He said 'Meredyth of the Gunners.' So I knew I was right and made a

ctly,"

e of the Ki

n leave, about a fortnight ago. I s

aimed heartily. "I've come to the conclusion that th

rs,"

on that he was the damn'dest, filthiest

horrible story. I remember making your

e out of my head for years. Then I begin to hear of a fellow called Boyce of the Rifles doing the most crazy magnifice

endary. He has done the maddest things and won the V.C. twenty times over. So that blighter Somers, accusing him of cowardice, was a ghastly liar. And then I remembered taking you up to hear that damnable slander, and I felt

ell me of an incide

e'll not let the men fire, but will take it on himself, and creep like a Gurkha and do the devils in. One night he got a whole listening post like that. He does a lot of things a second in command hasn't any business to do, but his men would follow him anywhere.

neral. As I had had enough exciting information fo