The difference between the intellectual instincts of an island people
and that of a continental race was the cause of the slow way in which
England groped her way to an understanding of the present war, so
that words of scorn and sarcasm, a thousand mean tricks of
recruiting sergeants in high office, and a thousand taunts had to be
used to whip up the young men of Great Britain, and induce them to
join the Army. Their hearths and homes were not in immediate
danger. They could not see any reasonable prospect of danger upon
English soil. Their women were safe. Their property, bought on the
hire system out of hard-earned wages, was not, they thought, in the
least likely to be smashed into small bits or carried off as loot. They
could not conceive the idea of jerry-built walls which enshrined all the
treasures of their life suddenly falling with a crash like a house of
cards, and burying their babies. The British Expeditionary Force
which they were asked to join was after all only a sporting party going
out to foreign fields for a great adventure.
2
In France there were no such illusions. As soon as war was imminent
the people thought of their frontiers, and prayed God in divers ways
that the steel hedges there were strong enough to keep back the
hostile armies until the general call to the colours had been
answered.
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