No relief, either, by running from one medicine-man to the next. Few of our disenchanted men doubt that the lightning cure of the Communist is only just another version of the lightning cure of the Tory, the authoritarian, the peremptory regimentalist. "Give _me_ a free hand and all will be well with you." Both say exactly the same thing in the end. One of them may call it the rule of the fittest, the other the rule of the proletariat; each means exactly the same thing--the rule of himself, the enforcement on everyone else of his own darling theory of what is best for them, whether they know it or not. Small choice in rotten apples; one bellyful of east wind is a diet as poor as another. Not in the yells and counter-yells of this and that vendor of patent hot-air is the heart of the average ex-soldier engaged. Rather "Away with all gas-projectors alike" is his present feeling towards eloquent men, Left or Right. For the moment he knows them too well, and is tired of hearing of plans which might work if he were either a babe in arms or a Michael of super-angelic wisdom and power. V You may be disillusioned about the value of things, or about their security, either coming to feel that your house is a poor place to live in or that, pleasant or not, it is likely enough to come down on your head. Of these two forms of discomfort our friend experiences both. Much that he took to be fairly noble now looks pretty mean; and much that seemed reassuringly stable is seen to be shaky. Civilization itself, the at any rate habitable dwelling which was to be shored up by the war, wears a strange new air of precariousness.