Then it was Kitchener's army--well-meaning
people, no doubt, but impossible for a European war. Kitchener's army
made good. Now it is the civil population, who, though they are the
blood relatives of the soldiers, are distrusted, and believed to be
likely to fail under a strain. Yet all the time, if you want to hear
half-hearted, timid, pusillanimous talk, the place where you are most
likely to hear it is in the public offices. Most of those who talk in
this way would be brave enough in fight, but they are kept at desks, and
worried with detailed business, and harassed by speculative dangers, and
they lose perspective. Soon or late, we are going to win this War; and
it is the people who are going to win it.
If the press (or perhaps the Government, which controls the press) is
not afraid of the people, why does it tell them so little about our
reverses, and the merits of our enemies? For information concerning
these things we have to depend wholly on conversation with returned
soldiers. For instance, the horrible stories that we hear of the brutal
treatment of our prisoners are numerous, and are true, and make a heavy
bill against Germany, which bill we mean to present.
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