They are entitled to their feelings, but they are not
entitled to shirk the necessary work of war. She believes that cowardice
is not like other failings of weakness, which are pretty much man's own
business. Cowardice is dangerous to the group.
Lady ----'s attitude at a bombardment was that of a child seeing a
hailstorm--open-eyed wonder. She was the purest exhibit of careless
fearlessness, carrying a buoyancy in danger. Generations of riding to
hounds and of big game shooting had educated fear out of her stock. Her
ancestors had always faced uncertainty as one of the ingredients of
life: they accepted danger in accepting life. The savage accepted fear
because he had to. With the English upper class, danger is a fine art, a
cult. It is an element in the family honor. One cannot possibly shrink
from the test. The English have expressed themselves in sport. People
who are good sportsmen are, of course, honorable fighters. The Germans
have allowed their craving for adventure to seethe inside themselves,
and then have aimed it seriously at human life. But the English have
taken off their excess vitality by outdoor contests.
What Lady ---- is the rest of the women are. Miss Smith, an English girl
nurse, jumped down from the ambulance that was retreating before the
Germans, and walked back into Ghent, held by the Germans, to nurse an
English officer till he died.
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