But now the stir and the peril were over. The Old Army had won. It had scarcely surrendered a single strong point or good billet; Territorials and New Army toiled at the coolie jobs of its household. It had not even been forced, like kings in times of revolution, to make apparent concessions, to water down the pure milk of the word. It had become only the more intensely itself; never in any war had commands been retained so triumphantly in the hands of the cavalry and the Guards, the leaders and symbols of the Old Army resistance to every inroad of mere professional ardour and knowledge and strong, eager brains. When Sir Francis Lloyd relinquished the London District Command a highly composite mess in France discussed possible successors. "Of course," said a Guards colonel gravely--and he was a guest in the Mess--"the first point is--he _must_ be a Guardsman." Peace conditions returning, you see; the peace frame of mind; the higher commands restored to their ancient status as property, "livings," perquisites, the bread of the children, not to be given to dogs. At home, too, peace conditions were taking heart to return. The scattered coveys of profiteers and job-hunters, almost alarmed by the first shots of the war, had long since met in security; "depredations as usual" was the word; and the mutual scalping and knifing of politicians had ceased to be shamefaced; who could fairly expect an old Regular Army to practise a more austere virtue than merchant princes and statesmen? III Even in trenches and near them, where most of the health was, time had begun to embrown the verdant soul of the army. "Kitchener's Army" was changing. Like every volunteer army, his had sifted itself, at its birth, with the only sieve that will riddle out, even roughly, the best men to be near in a fight. Till the first of the pressed men arrived at our front, a sergeant there, when he posted a sentry and left him alone in the dark, could feel about as complete a moral certitude as there is on the earth that the post would not be let down. For, whatever might happen, nothing inside the man could start whispering to him "You never asked to be here! if you do fail, it isn't your doing."