"You'll show 'em what we British are! Give us your hand, old pal, to shake"; And took him round from bar to bar And made him drunk--for England's sake.
That's how you helped him. Yesterday Clear-eyed and earnest, keen and hard, He held himself the soldier's way-- And now they've got him under guard.
That doesn't hurt you; you're all right; Your easy conscience takes no blame; But he, poor boy, with morning's light, He eats his heart out, sick with shame.
What's that to you? You understand Nothing of all his bitter pain; You have no regiment to brand; You have no uniform to stain;
No vow of service to abuse; No pledge to King and country due; But he has something dear to lose, And he has lost it--thanks to you.[1]
[Footnote 1: O.S. in _Punch_, November 4th, 1914. By kind permission of the Proprietors.]
A man who had so distinguished himself at the front as to be mentioned in a despatch came home slightly wounded. In less than twenty-four hours he was in a cell at a police station, and the next day fined forty shillings. Oh! the pathetic pity of it. That man got into trouble through the exhibition of one of the purest and best features of our human nature, the desire to show kindness. In their well-intentioned ignorance this man's friends--yes, they were real friends--knew of only one way of displaying friendliness--they gave him liquor.
I am not going to blame them, nor him entirely; I am going to lay some of the fault upon ourselves.
Since the beginning of the last century the habits of the upper classes, to use a generic though unpleasant term, have improved immeasurably. Then excess was more or less the rule among men of good position, was to a certain extent expected and provided for; witness _The School for Scandal_, or the leading novels of the period. Now, the man who disgraces himself at a dinner-table is never invited again.
And even as we go down in the social scale much improvement is apparent. Those who remember Bank Holidays on their first introduction will recollect that the excess of the working classes was quite open and shameless; but to-day some effort is generally made by the victims, or their friends, to hide the disgrace, because Public Opinion is improving. That is where we come in.