“Thanks very much. You ask him to do it himself, it’s far more likely to attract _him_. If I wrote such articles I should immediately be suspect. It’s a damned dangerous thing to do in England; in most cases the suspicion is far too likely to be true!” And they left it at that. * * * * * All this time the war was drawing steadily nearer. Probably it had become certain since 1911, though most people were taken quite unawares. Why did it happen? Who was responsible? Questions which have been interminably debated already and will furnish exultant historians with controversial material for generations to come. Already one foresees the creation of Chairs in the History of the First World War, to be set up in whatever civilized countries remain in existence after the next one. But for us the debate is vain, as vain as the pathetic and reiterated enquiry, “_Where_ did I catch this horrible cold?” If anybody or bodies engineered this catastrophe they must have been gratified by its shattering success. Few lives indeed in the belligerent countries remained unaffected by it, and in most cases the effect was unpleasant. Adult lives were cut sharply into three sections—pre-war, war, and post-war. It is curious—perhaps not so curious—but many people will tell you that whole areas of their pre-war lives have become obliterated from their memories. Pre-war seems like prehistory. What did we do, how did we feel, what were we living for in those incredibly distant years? One feels as if the period 1900-14 has to be treated archæologically, painfully recreated by experts from slight vestiges. Those who were still children at the Armistice, who were so to speak born into the war, can hardly understand the feeling of tranquil security which existed, the almost smug optimism of our lives. Especially in England, for the French retained uncomfortable memories of 1870; but still, even in France life seemed established and secure. Since Waterloo, England had engaged in no great war. There were frontier and colonial skirmishes, and the reputation of the country for military organization and efficiency was immensely strengthened in the world’s eyes by the conduct of the Crimean and Boer Wars. But there had been nothing on a really big scale. The Franco-Prussian War was just one of those unfortunate occurrences one must expect from backward Continental nations, and the huge struggle of the War of Secession was observed through the wrong end of the telescope. In some quarters, indeed, that war had been considered as a peculiar mercy of God to His Chosen People, enabling the British Merchant Marine to re-establish an indisputable primacy at the expense of a regrettable upstart among nations.