Читать книгу Disenchantment - C. E. Montague - Страница 14

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It was, of course, an incomplete view of the case. Shall we have Henries, Fluellens, and Erpinghams at the hand of God, and no Bardolphs, Pistols, and Nyms? Our stage was not really rotten by any means; only half-rotten, like others of man's institutions. Half the Old Army, at least, was exemplary. Even among politicians unselfishness may, with some trouble, be found. Still, this is no exposition of what the New Army ought to have said to itself as it lay on the ground after Lights Out compounding the new temper which comes out to-day, but only of what it did say. It was reacting. In the first weeks of the war most of the flock had too simply taken on trust all that its pastors and masters had said. Now, after believing rather too much, they were out to believe little or nothing—except that in the lump pastors and masters were frauds. From any English training-camp, about that time, you almost seemed to see a light steam rising, as it does from a damp horse. This was illusion beginning to evaporate.