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They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time, they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii, and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did.
They follow the phases of the war in Great Britain, the strain, the blunderings, the tenacity, the onset of conscription in an essentially non-military community, with the complete understanding of a people similarly circumstanced, differing only by scale and distance. They have been through something of the sort already; they may have something of the sort happen again.
Why should the young go before their time?... Yet I have no bitterness about the war. It was a ghastly mistake and it has humiliated us as a nation. But nations are made by their blunderings as much as by their successes. Emilio would not have grudged his life.
The mistakes of our generalship, the inefficiency of our staff-work, were not greater than the blunderings of the German High Command, and their problem was more difficult than ours because of the weakness of their reserves, owing to enormous preoccupation on the Russian front. The agony of their men was greater than ours.
Both schools of thought conceive of God as sitting upon a marble throne, eternally young, eternally beautiful, beholding with quiet indifference from afar how man, with infinite blunderings, sufferings and tears makes his way forward.
A wind was rising on the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible things had happened to women before, one heard of them with shudders when they were recorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered that sometimes there seemed blunderings in the great Scheme of things.
They were ready to condone the blunderings and flounderings of the 1915 offensive as the necessary penalties of an "amateur" army, they had had to learn their own lesson in Champagne, but they were surprised to find how much the British had still to learn in July, 1916. The British officers excuse themselves because, they plead, they are still amateurs.
Ester, I declare to you, if ever angels get into kitchens and pantries, and the like, mother is one of them. The way she bore with my endless blunderings was perfectly angelic. I'm glad, though, that her day of martyrdom is over, and mine, too, for that matter."
I only wanted to let you know that well, that something must be done for the others, and you've understood me perfectly, so let's pass on to the next point." "Yes, we've settled that," said Margaret, undisturbed by his strategic blunderings. "Go ahead; give away all you can, bearing in mind I've a clear six hundred. What a mercy it is to have all this money about one!"
Behold her, making sport of her own life-drama turning into wildest phantasy her domestic ignominies, her inhibitions and her helpmate's blunderings; evoking the hosts of the future as to a festival, rehearsing the tragedy of her soul with all posterity as her audience.
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