So when
wonderful rumours came to the East Anglian village where he lived, on
August 1, 1914, Sergeant Cane said: ``That means war,'' and decided
then and there to have nothing to do with it: it was somebody else's
turn; he felt he had done enough. Then came August 4th, and England
true to her destiny, and then Lord Kitchener's appeal for men.
Sergeant Cane had a family to look after and a nice little house: he
had left the army ten years.
In the next week all the men went who had been in the army before, all
that were young enough, and a good sprinkling of the young men too who
had never been in the army. Men asked Cane if he was going, and he
said straight out ``No.''
By the middle of August Cane was affecting the situation. He was a
little rallying point for men who did not want to go. ``He knows what
it's like,'' they said.
In the smoking room of the Big House sat the Squire and his son, Arthur
Smith; and Sir Munion Boomer-Platt, the Member for the division. The
Squire's son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Cane
had left the army since. All the morning he had been cursing an
imaginary general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk with
Smith's own letter before him, in full view but unopened.
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