Explore "All That Swagger" by Miles Franklin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Thus the Delacys and other integral units of the populace drowsed along until one fine day they found the world at war. From Chicago to Baghdad, Tokyo to St Petersburg, Canton to Canberra and Rio de Janeiro, and hack again to London, wiseacres were assured that it could not be real. Just some mad scare: the dogs of war would he back in their collars again in a twinkling.
Kitchener was predicting that it would be a three years' job, and was regarded as a war-monger, talking in character. War could not last with all the modern appliances. Europe would be blown to smithereens in two weeks. The doctrine of "frightfulness" to make war so terrible that men would shrink from beginning it, had mesmerized the masses.