"Well, I'm a League of Nations man up to a point. Up to this point--that the next show's going to be so unutterably ghastly that a generation that leaves anything undone to prevent it ought to be wiped off the map--_any_thing undone, you understand, whether you personally believe in it or whether you don't. We're only at the beginning of the New War, and it will be far more 'lightning' than any of Turner's New Strikes." "Democracy'll prevent it." "As it's doing in Russia, eh? Just as likely to make it. Democracy's got such damnably high-falutin ideals and so little sense of ordinary decency. For an inhuman thing that belongs to everybody and pleases nobody give me the Will of the People. If you read your history you'll find that hot air's usually followed by bloodshed. And they won't stick at much. Personally I prefer a King's war with guns to a democratic one with black typhus germs." "Sunny soul, our Major, isn't he?" somebody laughed again. "Well," said Hay, disappearing behind his paper again, "a thousand bombing-planes will do it the next time. I hope we aren't forgetting how to make 'em, and use 'em. Waiter, bring me a whisky-and-soda, please." III For a time nothing was heard in the smoking-room but the rustle of the turning papers and the clink of a coffee-cup in a saucer. Sluggishly--for the idleness that had latterly overmastered me tired me to my very marrow--I was comparing Hay's words with what Cecil Hubbard had said on the same subject. "Continuity of manufacture and the training of men"--you might call this "civil" aviation if you liked, but according to both men it was indistinguishable from the question of national defense. And, further, Hubbard, unless I was mistaken, had allowed young Smith some portion of vision in the matter. "It doesn't matter whether he's twenty-four or a hundred-and-four"--"The wind blew whither it list"--"While the old Burleighs had been nodding some youngster had been getting away with the job." Well, I myself, no longer very young, could only sigh and agree that it seemed to be a young man's business. In other fields of action youth, the cutting-edge, was directed by the experienced hand and the wise head that too has been young in its day; but in this field none but youth has or has had the experience. Its time is short, it reaps its harvest in its Spring. We in the August of our lives may say, "Thus and thus should be done," but a young head shakes and we are silenced. The judgment of an infant answers us. A Samuel speaks, and our lips are closed within our beards. We administer, advise, finance, organize, but his is the mounting heart. In the midst of my meditation I became aware that I was being spoken to by Mowbray. I told you he was a sculptor. He is no great intimate of Esdaile's, but naturally they are not unacquainted. "I beg your pardon. What were you saying?" I said.