She was silent.
I bent forward.

"Wouldn't you like him to dribble into the great flood ?" She lifted her lean shoulders despairingly.
"He's the only son of a widow.

Even in France and Germany they're not expected to fight.

But if he were different I would let him go gladly--I'm not selfish and unpatriotic, Major," she said with an unaccustomed little catch in her throat--and for the very first time I found in her something sympathetic--"but," she continued, "it seems so foolish to sacrifice all his intellectual brilliance to such crudities as fighting, when it might be employed so much more advantageously elsewhere." "But, good God, my dear lady!" I cried.

"Where are your wits?
Where's your education?
Where's your intelligent understanding of the daily papers?
Where's your commonsense ?"--I'm afraid I was brutally rude.
"Can't you give a minute's thought to the situation?
If there's one institution on earth that's shrieking aloud for intellectual brilliance, it's the British Army! Do you think it's a refuge for fools?
Do you think any born imbecile is good enough to outwit the German Headquarters Staff?
Do you think the lives of hundreds of his men--and perhaps the fate of thousands--can be entrusted to any brainless ass?
An officer can't have too much brains.