Suddenly, it became personal, and terror breathed down the back of her own neck. Man’s inhumanity to man, unleashed, was an obscenity, and that obscenity was each person’s own private responsibility. This, then, was the meaning of the word WAR. It wasn’t just having to carry your gas mask, and do the black-out, and giggle at Miss Pawson, and paint the attic for the evacuees; but a nightmare infinitely more terrible, from which there could be no grateful awakening. It had to be endured, and this could only be done, not by running away, or putting your head under the blankets, but by picking up
...more
