The American Civil War was very long and very dreadful, but it was a human and humane business compared to what Europe has just come through. There is no analogy in history for the present moment. An old soldier of that Civil War, after hearing these words, wrote me an account of his after-career which shows that in exceptional cases a life so stirring, full, and even dangerful may be lived that no void is felt. But one swallow does not make a summer, nor will a few hundreds or even thousands of such lives leaven to any extent the vast lump of human material used in this war. The spiritual point is this: In front of a man in ordinary civilised existence there hovers ever that moment in the future when he expects to prove himself more of a man than he has yet proved himself. For these soldiers of the Great Carnage the moment of probation is already in the past. They _have_ proved themselves as they will never have the chance to do again, and secretly they know it. One talks of their powers of heroism and sacrifice being wanted just as much in time of Peace; but that cannot really be so, because Peace times do not demand men’s lives――which is the ultimate test――with every minute that passes. No, the great moment of their existence lies behind them, young though so many of them are. This makes them at once greater than us, yet in a way smaller, because they have lost the power and hope of expansion. They have lived their masterpiece already. Human nature is elastic, and hope springs eternal; but a _climax_ of experience and sensation cannot be repeated; I think these have reached and passed the uttermost climax; and in Europe they number millions. This is a veritable portent, and I am glad that in America you will not have it to any great extent. Now how does this affect the future? Roughly speaking it must, I think, have a diminishing effect on what I may call loosely――Creative ability. People have often said to me: “We shall have great writings and paintings from these young men when they come back.” We shall certainly have poignant expression of their experiences and sufferings; and the best books and paintings of the war itself are probably yet to come. But, taking the long view, I do not believe we shall have from them, in the end, as much creative art and literature as we should have had if they had not been through the war. Illusion about life, and interest in ordinary daily experience and emotion, which after all, are to be the stuff of their future as of ours, has in a way been blunted or destroyed for them. And in the other provinces of life, in industry, in trade, in affairs, how can we expect from men who have seen the utter uselessness of money or comfort or power in the last resort, the same naïve faith in these things, or the same driving energy towards the attaining of them that we others exhibit?