All the wise men were not in the east. It was the fault of the war, the outlandish, innovatory war that did not conform to the proper text-books as it ought to have done; an unimagined war of flankless armies scratching each other's faces across an endless thorn hedge, not dreamt of in Staff College philosophy; a war that was always putting out of date the best that had been known and thought and invented, always sending everyone to school again; unkind, above all, to us who, if well-to-do, bring up our young to have a proper respect for the past and to feel that if yesterday's parasol will not keep out the rain of to-day, then it ought to, and no one can blame them for using it. VII Yet the men in the line talked, and so did the subalterns, most of whom had been in the ranks, now that the war ran into years. Soldiers have endless occasions for talk. Being seldom alone, and having to hold their tongues sometimes, they talk all the time that they can. And most of their talk was sour and scornful. Ever since their enlistment there had been running down in them one of the springs of health in the life of a country. An unprecedented number of the most healthy, high-spirited, and nationally valuable Englishmen in the prime of life were telling one another that, among those whom they had hitherto taken more or less completely on trust as their "betters," things were going on which must make the war harder for us to win; while they, the common people, cared with all their hearts about saving Belgium and France, those betters, so placed that they could do more to that end if they would, seemed to be caring, on the whole, less--shouting and gesticulating enough, but ready to give up less of what was pleasant and to do less of what was hard, and perhaps not able to do much at their best. Colonel Repington's friends, with their scented baths, their prime vintages, and their mutinous chatter, were not actually seen; but there was a bad smell about; the air stank of bad work in high places.