"
"Have you read the article?" Jane enquired.
"This evening, just before I came," Dartrey replied gravely.
"I can understand," Tallente intervened, "that you feel bound to take
this seriously, Dartrey, but after all there is nothing traitorous to
our cause in what I wrote. I attacked the trades unions for their
colossal and fiendish selfishness when the Empire was tottering. I
would do it again under the same circumstances. Remember I was fresh
from Ypres. I had seen Englishmen, not soldiers but just hastily
trained citizens--bakers, commercial travellers, clerks, small
tradesmen--butchered like rabbits but fighting for their country, dying
for it--and all the time those blackguardly stump orators at home turned
their backs to France and thought the time opportune to wrangle for a
rise in wages and bring the country to the very verge of a universal
strike. It didn't come off, I know, but there were very few people who
really understood how near we were to it. Dartrey, we sacrifice too
much of our real feelings to political necessity. I won't apologize for
my article; I'll defend it.
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