THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
me to deal with just to start with. And I might tell
you I had four years in the trenches in nineteen-
fourteen—nineteen-eighteen with Captain Ziegler,
and the thing that can frighten me hasn't been born
yet. . . .
'What's more . . . 1*11 tell you another thing.
Some of you've got no business to be here at all.
If your district is occupied that's different,, but there
are others. . . . What have you left home for? Just
because a bomb happens to have fallen on your
particular village? A nice business! We got a lot
more bombs than one between 'fourteen and
'eighteen, and torpedoes and artillery barrages, which
are a damned sight worse. We didn't clear out just
because of little things like that. . . . What's that?
You're not soldiers? That just where you're wrong.
In this war we're all soldiers, because they're
attacking us all. Hasn't it ever struck you that
you're helping the Boche by cluttering up the roads,
swamping the stations, and holding up the troop
trains? There's only one thing matters now, and
that's to win this war. And everybody's got to do
the best they can: I've got to watch my finances: you
should stay where you belong so long as it's bearable
and the Boches don't come along.
* "I'm at war," old Clemenceau used to say in my
time. He was at war and now -were at war and it's no
good talking. We don't care if our neighbour says
that the Germans have been seen at B------ or
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