We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about his state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me like him. I never met a man more English in all his characteristics, or more typical of the quality which belongs to our strength and our weakness. As a Harrow boy his manners were perfect, according to the English code--quiet, unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of other people’s comfort in little things. According to the French code, he would have been considered cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid. Certainly he had that touch of arrogance which is in all Englishmen of the old tradition. All his education and environment had taught him to believe that English civilisation--especially in the hunting set--was perfect and supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for those unlucky enough to be born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other race. He was not stupid by nature--on the contrary, he had sound judgment on matters within his range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of detail, but his vision was shut in by those frontiers of thought which limit public-school life in England and certain sets at Oxford who do not break free, and do not wish to break free, from the conventional formula of “good form,” which regulates every movement of their brain as well as every action of their lives. It is in its way a noble formula, and makes for aristocracy. My country, right or wrong; loyalty to King and State; the divine right of the British race to rule uncivilised peoples for their own good; the undoubted fact that an English gentleman is the noblest work of God; the duties of “_noblesse oblige_,” in courage, in sacrifice, in good maimers, and in playing the game, whatever the game may be, in a sporting spirit. When I was in Harding’s company I knew that it was ridiculous to discuss any subject which lay beyond that formula. It was impossible to suggest that England had ever been guilty of the slightest injustice, a touch of greed, or a tinge of hypocrisy, or something less than wisdom. To him that was just traitor’s talk. A plea for the better understanding of Ireland, for a generous measure of “self-determination” would have roused him to a hot outburst of anger. The Irish to him were all treacherous, disloyal blackguards, and the only remedy of the Irish problem was, he thought, martial law and machine-gun demonstrations, stern and, if need be, terrible. I did not argue with him, or chaff him as some of his comrades did, and keeping within the prescribed limits of conversation set by his code, we got on together admirably. Once only in those days on the Rhine did Harding show an emotion which would have been condemned by his code. It was due, no doubt, to that nervous fever which made some wag change the word “demobilisation” into “demoralisation.”