Neither his picture nor the
paragraph may be positively a lie, and yet, when the arm-chair dweller
chucklingly draws attention to them, I am tempted to relapse into
irreverence and utter one or other (or perhaps both) of two phrases
which T. Atkins is himself credited with using _ad nauseam_--"Na-poo"
and "I _don't_ think."
When I assert--as I do unhesitatingly assert--that no one could work in
a war-hospital ward for any length of time without an ever-deepening
respect and fondness for Tommy Atkins, it is the same thing as asserting
that the respect and fondness are evoked by close contact with one's
countrymen: nothing more nor less. A hospital ward is a haphazard
selection of one's fellow-Britons: the most wildly haphazard it is
possible to conceive. And the pessimistic cynic who, after a sojourn in
that changing company for a month or two can still either generalise
about them or (if he does) can still not acknowledge that in the mass
they are amazingly lovable, is beyond hope. The war has taught its
lessons to us all, and none more important than this. For myself I
confess that I never knew before how nice were nine out of ten of the
individuals with whom I sat silent in trains, whom I glanced at in
business offices or behind counters, whom I saw in workshops or in the
field or who were my neighbours in music-halls.
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