The stick hammered away again.  “Because we’ve got obligations there.  We’ve got to defend Belgium, for one.  And if we hadn’t—­if we hadn’t any obligations we’d pretty soon, we’d damn soon find them as soon as ever Germany breaks loose.  That’s what these National Service Johnnies ought to tell the people, that’s what Bobs ought to tell them, that’s what these blasted politicians ought to tell them:  you don’t want National Service to defend your perishing homes.  The Navy’s going to do that.  You want it like hell because you’ve got to defend your lives—­out there.”  He waved his stick towards “out there.”  “My God!” he said.  He was consumed with the intensity of his own emotions.  “My God!”

Despite himself, Sabre was impressed.  The man would have impressed anybody.  His eyes were extraordinarily penetrating.  There actually were tiny little points of perspiration about his nose.

“I never thought about that,” Sabre said doubtfully.  “I never thought there were any obligations.  I doubt any member of the Government would admit there were any.”

“I know damn well they wouldn’t,” Otway declared.  “And they’d be helped to deny it, or to evade it, by the howl of laughter there’d be in the Commons if any one had the guts to get up and ask if we had any obligations.  There’s no joke goes down like that sort of joke.  Well—­” His manner changed.  He tucked his stick under his arm and took out a silver cigarette case.  “Cigarette?  Well—­they’ll laugh the other side of their chuckle heads one of these days.”

Sabre took a cigarette.  “You’re pretty sure there’s going to be a war, aren’t you?”

The extraordinary man, who had become smiling and airy, immediately became extraordinary again.  He had struck a match, held it to Sabre’s cigarette, and was applying it to his own.  He extinguished it with violent jerks of his arm and dashed it on to the pavement.  “Sure?  My God, sure?  I tell you, Sabre, you won’t be five years, I don’t believe you’ll be two years, one year, older before you’ll not only be sure—­you’ll know!  I’ve just finished a course at the Staff College, you know.  We finished up with a push over to Belgium to do the battlefields.  We went into Germany, some of us.  They fed us in some of their messes.  Do you know, those chaps in those messes there talked about fighting us as naturally and as certainly as you talk with your opponents about a coming footer match.  They talked about ’When we fight you’—­not ’if we fight you’—­’when’, as if it was as fixed as Christmas.  And they didn’t talk any of this bilge about fighting us in England; they knew, as I know, and every soldier knows—­every soldier who’s keen—­that it’s going to be out there.  In Europe.”  He had not taken two puffs at his cigarette before he wrenched it from his mouth and dashed it after the match.  “Sabre, why the hell aren’t people here told that?  Why are they stuck up with this rot about defending their shores when they