Many a man who had never found his
place in life, because his was the restless, roving spirit which could
not settle, or that chafed against ordered conventional ways, found his
happiness at last in August 1914. Alongside those were the men who were
passionately patriotic and saw very clearly and quickly the long issues
involved to the country they loved. The fate of Belgium had a far more
moving influence with the ranks of the new army than the officer class,
I think, quite realised. Indeed, with the later recruits I gathered the
impression that indignation at the German atrocities in Belgium was the
prevailing motive in their enlistment. There can be no question in the
mind of any one who worked intimately among the men of the new armies in
the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one
shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing
else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people
as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the
torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pass to the
sea we knew nothing.
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