Answering the call of duty

From ‘Education and Honour’, The Spectator, 17 July 1915: The young man who has been to a Public School or to one of the Universities and who remains at home without adequate excuse doing nothing is so rare as to be very conspicuous. In other classes it is otherwise. Among the so-called lowest class men have responded pretty freely to the call. The so-called lower middle class, though in this there are of course brilliant exceptions, has perhaps answered less freely than any other class. In this class may be found, we fancy, most of the smug complacency which assumes that the fighting has necessarily to be done by other people, and that the Empire and the home will somehow be saved by efforts in which it is not necessary to take any part.