Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/200
A SON AT THE FRONT
meaning, and I'm not prepared to say where honour lies in a case like yours." He mused a moment, and then went on: "What would George's view be?"
Campton did not immediately reply. Not so many weeks ago he would have welcomed the chance of explaining that George's view, thank God, had remained perfectly detached and objective, and that the cheerful acceptance of duties forcibly imposed on him had not in the least obscured his sense of the fundamental injustice of his being mixed up in the thing at all.
But how could he say this now? If George's view were still what his father had been in the habit of saying it was, then he held that view alone: Campton himself no longer thought that any civilized man could afford to stand aside from such a conflict.
"As far as I know," he said, "George hasn't changed his mind."
Boylston stirred in his armchair, knocked the ash from his cigar, and looked up at the ceiling.
"Whereas you ———" Dastrey suggested.
"Yes," said Campton. "I feel differently. You speak of the difference of having been in contact with what's going on out there. But how can anybody not be in contact, who has any imagination, any sense of right and wrong? Do these pictures and hangings ever shut it out from you—or those books over there, when you turn to them after your day's work? Perhaps they do, because you've got a real job, a job you've been ordered to do,
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