Children of no Man's Land by G.B. Stern

I

Richard found his Easter holidays dull. Montagu Hall was not a satisfactory substitute for Daisybanks, where he had owned his own carpentering shed in the garden, in which he might rampage as he pleased. Ferdie had been an understanding father in supplying Richard and Deb with full facilities to rag and to rampage. Now Richard passed most of his time reading books that dealt with the practical side of the war, and keeping fit in preparation for when he was eighteen. Perhaps he could squeeze himself in next year already by mis-stating his age. there was always the dreadful possibility that the war might suddenly come to an end, and leave him what it had found him, a Winborough fifth form boy.

He was glad when the last week of the holidays came round; Deb was always about with some girl-Antonia Verity; and most of his chums being older than himself, were scattered about the country in training, or else in the trenches. David Rothenburg, of course, was about the same age; but Rothenburg was a moony sort of chap, especially lately. More from boredom than affection, Richard spent an afternoon at Bertie Fraser's home in the south-west of London. The news of the torpedoing of the Lusitania had come through a couple of days before; and the two boys vented some of their hot indignation by experiments with a model submarine which should "damn well teach the blackguards not to mess about with our passenger liners!"

"I'll put you on your way," Fraser volunteered, when Richard had to go.

They turned from the quiet street of houses into a mews; then through a slum displaying barrows with highly-coloured wares, gaudy with small shops gustily illuminated, raucous with slatternly women calling from the upper windows to their offspring in the gutters.

"Short cut to the trams," explained Fraser. "Hullo, what's the row?"

A woman was huddled on a doorstep, wailing loudly, openly, without any pretence of hiding her stark grief. Her wisps of grey hair were blown by the wind flat across her distorted face, which she neither burrowed in her arms nor covered with a handkerchief. For she had just received tidings that her daughter had gone down in the steerage of the Lusitania, and she wanted God and man to know it.

A knot of sympathizers, neighbours and casual passers-by, stood dumbly around her, listening to the saga of Ethel Ann's childhood, and Ethel Ann's adolescence, and Ethel Ann envisioned powerfully but crudely as a human livid face, struggling, gulping, pleading for help. help refused. "They pushed 'em back into the water! " screamed the old crone. "My little 'un. Curse the Germans! -Curse 'em! They watched 'er drowning, and they laughed. A-a-aaah. " articulation trailed away into a long-drawn-out cry of rage and mourning and hate. She strained her skinny arms in a tight line upward, as though in one gesture could be uttered all that her tongue had failed to say.

Richard felt it was impossible just to stand still and look on at this. He glowered about him in a spirit of desperate truculence. The others of the group were in exactly the same case, their eyes roaming stupidly up and down the narrow street, as though in search of some immediate measures. A carter leaning against his dray drawn up to the kerb opposite, spoke out fiercely:

"Ay. 'Uns. That's the sort they are. Wish I 'ad one or two under my fist now. I'd show 'em what for."

"You _have_ got 'em under your fist now-plenty-if you know where to look! " A lantern-jawed man with the hollow eyes of a fanatic, sprang onto the tail-board of the dray. At once he formed a vortex for all the loose and aimless emotions adrift in that street. Richard and Fraser found themselves in a wedge of men and women, women predominating, swaying with that sort of concerted drunken rhythm peculiar to all crowds. Even the mother of the drowned girl stopped her wails, and stared fixedly at the demagogue.

"Germans everywhere in this country-millions of 'em, laughing up their sleeves because we're such ruddy softs as not to chuck'em out. Laughing now, I expect, over our women and children pushed back into the icy water; _English_ women and children. Yes, it's a good joke, ain't it? First-class! . I 'ad a pal on the Lusitania-well, never mind that-there's some 'ere as 'ad more than pals. Are we going to stand it-that's what I want to know? Are we going on trading with murderers and cowards, living cheek by jowl with 'em, buying our very bread from 'em. _poisoned_ bread! I tell you, there are Germans in the next street, in this street, and in a thousand other streets in England, with their dirty names over the shop-windows. Ask the Government! -ah! the Government'll do something about it, per'aps, by and by. Ask 'em-they'll say they've took the proper measures of precaution. We don't want precaution, thank yer all the same. We want revenge on the foul scum what sank the Lusitania! We want revenge-not by and by, but _now_! We want revenge-and by the dying agonies of our children, and for the sake of those they've left, we'll have it!"