Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“And what mighty principle had the honor of being a cloak for all that?” he asked sarcastically.

“Now here, you see, is the paradox. I can talk like this and pretend to analyze, and even sneer at the principle. Yet I’m as much under the spell as the most wishy-washy typist who spends a week-end at Brighton with her young man before he sails with the conscripts.”

“I’m waiting to hear what the spell is.”

“It’s this—self sacrifice with a capital S. Young men going to get killed for us—we would have been their wives—we can’t be—therefore we’ll be as much as we can. And that’s the story.”

“Good God!”

“Young officer comes back,” she went on; “must amuse him, must amuse him; must give him the impression that people here are with him, that it’s a big home he’s coming to, that he’s appreciated. Now you know, of course, in the lower classes that sort of thing means children. Whether that will ever spread to us will depend on the duration of the war.”

“How about old ideas, and standards of woman and that sort of thing?” he asked, rather sheepishly.