They did not know then about people in general going to the war.  They thought it was just for the army and navy, not for ordinary people.  That idea came a little later, after the Anti-Potter party had broken up and gone home.

The young men began to enlist and get commissions.  It was done; it was the correct idea.  Johnny Potter, who belonged to an O.T.C., got a commission early.

Jane said within herself, ‘Johnny can go and I can’t.’  She knew she was badly, incredibly left.  Johnny was in the movement, doing the thing that mattered.  Further, Johnny might ultimately be killed in doing it; her Johnny.  Everything else shrank and was little.  What were books?  What was anything?  Jane wanted to fight in the war.  The war was damnable, but it was worse to be out of it.  One was such an utter outsider.  It wasn’t fair.  She could fight as well as Johnny could.  Jane went about white and sullen, with her world tumbling into bits about her.

Mr. Potter said in the press, and Mrs. Potter in the home, ’The people of England have a great opportunity before them.  We must all try to rise to it’—­as if the people of England were fishes and the opportunity a fly.

Opportunity, thought Jane.  Where is it?  I see none.  It was precisely opportunity which the war had put an end to.

‘The women of England must now prove that they are worthy of their men,’ said the Potter press.

‘I dare say,’ thought Jane.  Knitting socks and packing stores and learning first aid.  Who wanted to do things like that, when their brothers had a chance to go and fight in France?  Men wouldn’t stand it, if it was the other way round.  Why should women always get the dull jobs?  It was because they bore them cheerfully; because they didn’t really, for the most part, mind, Jane decided, watching the attitude of her mother and Clare.  The twins, profoundly selfish, but loving adventure and placidly untroubled by nerves or the prospect of physical danger, saw no hardship in active service. (This was before the first winter and the development of trench warfare, and people pictured to themselves skirmishes in the open, exposed to missiles, but at least keeping warm).

2

Every one one knew was going.  Johnny said to Jane, ’War is beastly, but one’s got to be in it.’  He took that line, as so many others did.  ’Juke’s going,’ he said.  ’As a combatant, I mean, not a padre.  He thinks the war could have been prevented with a little intelligence; so it could, I dare say; but as there wasn’t a little intelligence and it wasn’t prevented, he’s going in.  He says it will be useful experience for him—­help him in his profession; he doesn’t believe in parsons standing outside things and only doing soft jobs.  I agree with him.  Every one ought to go.’

‘Every one can’t,’ said Jane morosely.

But to Johnny every one meant all young men, and he took no heed.

Gideon went.  It might, he said to Juke, be a capitalists’ war or any one else’s; the important thing was not whose war it was but who was going to win it.