We must remember that, in the course of nature, the proportion of former combatants among us must steadily decline. And war hath no fury like a non-combatant. Can you not already forehear, in the far distance, beyond the peace period now likely to come, the still, small voice of some Henley or Lang of later days beginning to pipe up again with Ancient Pistol's ancient suggestion: "What? Shall we have incision? Shall we imbrue?" And then a sudden _furore_, a war-dance, a beating of tom-toms. And so the whole cycle revolving again. "Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? How giddily a' turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty? Sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh's soldiers in the reechy painting, sometimes like god Bel's priests in the old church window; sometimes like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry?" Anything to be in the fashion. There is only one thing for it. There must still be five or six million ex-soldiers. They are the most determined peace party that ever existed in Britain. Let them clap the only darbies they have--the Covenant of the League of Nations--on to the wrists of all future poets, romancers, and sages. The future is said to be only the past entered by another door. We must beware in good time of those boys, and fiery elderly men, piping in Thessaly. * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. Typographical errors were silently corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.