Major’s inability to find words to fit the situation. I embarked on a floundering explanation of my mental attitude with regard to the War; but I couldn’t make it sound convincing, and at the back of my mind was a misgiving that I must seem to him rather crazy. To be telling the acting-Colonel of my regimental Training Depot that I had come to the conclusion that England ought to make peace with Germany—was this altogether in focus with right-mindedness? No; it was useless to expect him to take me seriously as an ultimatumist. So I gazed fixedly at the floor and said, “Hadn’t you better have me put under arrest at once?”—thereby causing poor Major Macartney additional discomfort. My remark recoiled on me, almost as if I’d uttered something unmentionable. “I’d rather die than do such a thing!” he exclaimed. He was a reticent man, and that was his way of expressing his feeling about those whom he had watched, month after month, going out to the trenches, as he would have gone himself had he been a younger man.
At this point it was obviously his duty to remonstrate with me severely and to assert his authority. But what fulminations could be effective against one whose only object was to be put under arrest? … “As long as he doesn’t really think I’m dotty!” I thought. But he showed no symptom of that, as far as I was aware; and he was a man who made one feel that he trusted one’s integrity, however much he might disagree with one’s opinions.
No solution having been arrived at for the present, he now suggested—in confidential tones which somehow implied sympathetic understanding of my predicament—that I should go to the Exchange Hotel in Liverpool and there await further instructions. I gladly acquiesced, and we emerged from the hut a little less funereally than we had entered it. My taxi man was still waiting, for in my bewilderment I had forgotten to pay him. Once more the Major grasped my hand, and if I did not thank him for his kindness it was because my gratitude was too great. So I trundled unexpectedly back to Liverpool; and although, in all likelihood,