War and the Future: Italy, France and Britain at War. H. G. Wells

things. On the desolate path that winds about amidst the shell craters and the fragments and the red-rusted wire, with the silken shiver of passing shells in the air and the blue of the lower sky continually breaking out into eddying white puffs, it is wonderful how tawdry such panoplies of the effigy appear. We knew that we and our allies are upon a greater, graver, more fundamental business than that sort of thing now. We are very near the waking point.

      “Well,” I said, “it's got to be done.”

      “Aye,” he said, easing the strap of his rifle a little; “it's got to be done.”