Old men and maidens, mothers and children, and contented young fellows in khaki belonging to all kinds of arms, formed a most respectable crowd.

The flower of Wellingsfordian youth was noticeably absent.

They were having too excellent a time to be drawn into the temptation of a recruiting meeting, in spite of the band and the fine afternoon and the promiscuity of attractive damsels.
They were making unheard-of money at the circumjacent factories; their mothers were waxing fat on billeting-money.

They never had so much money to spend on moving-picture-palaces and cheap jewellery for their inamoratas in their lives.

As our beautiful Educational system had most scrupulously excluded from their school curriculum any reference to patriotism, any rudimentary conception of England as their sacred heritage, and as they had been afforded no opportunity since they left school of thinking of anything save their material welfare and grosser material appetites, the vague talk of peril to the British Empire left them unmoved.