"Neither of us do. What is language for? What the _hell_ is language for? We go round and round. I suppose I'm an old fool who cannot understand your modern ways . . . But you're not modern. I'll do you _that_ justice. . . . That beastly little McKechnie is modern. . . . I shall ram him into your divisional-transport job, so that he won't incommode you in your battalion. . . . Do you understand what the little beast did? He got leave to go and get a divorce. And then did not get a divorce. _That's_ modernism. He said he had scruples. I understand that he and his wife and . . . some dirty other fellow . . . slept three in a bed. That's modern scruples. . . ." Tietjens said: "No, sir, it's not really. . . . But what is a man to do if his wife is unfaithful to him?" The general said as if it were an insult: "Divorce the harlot! Or live with her! . . ." Only a beast, he went on, would expect a woman to live all her life alone in a cockloft! She's bound to die. Or go on the streets. . . . What sort of a fellow wouldn't see that? Was there any sort of beast who'd expect a woman to live . . . with a man beside her. . . . Why, she'd . . . she'd be bound to. . . . He'd have to take the consequences of whatever happened. The general repeated: "Whatever happened! If she pulled all the strings of all the shower-baths in the world!" Tietjens said: "Still, sir . . . there are . . . there used to be . . . in families of . . . position . . . a certain . . ." He stopped. The general said: "Well . . ." Tietjens said: "On the part of the man . . . a certain . . . Call it . . . parade!" The general said: "Then there had better be no more parades. . . ." He said: "Damn it! . . . Beside us, all women are saints. . . . Think of what child-bearing is. I know the world. . . . Who would stand that? . . . You? . . . I . . . I'd rather be the last poor devil in Perry's lines!" He looked at Tietjens with a sort of injurious cunning: "Why _don't_ you divorce?" he asked. Panic came over Tietjens. He knew it would be his last panic of that interview. No brain could stand more. Fragments of scenes of fighting, voices, names, went before his eyes and ears. Elaborate problems. . . . The whole map of the embattled world ran out in front of him-as large as a field. An embossed map in greenish _papier mâché_--a ten-acre field of embossed _papier mâché_: with the blood of O Nine Morgan blurring luminously over it. Years before . . . How many months? . . . Nineteen, to be exact, he had sat on some tobacco plants on the Mont de Kats. . . . No, the Montagne Noire. In Belgium. . . . What had he been doing? . . . Trying to get the lie of the land. . . . No. . . . Waiting to point out positions to some fat home general who had never come. The Belgian proprietor of the tobacco plants had arrived, and had screamed his head off over the damaged plants. . . .