Many of the graves of our airmen were marked by crosses which are adorned with carven wings, and in this speaks, not only a military but a human pride. Foot-soldiers did not see in the aeroplane a mere mechanical contrivance but a new human victory over matter. The feats of airmen flattered pedestrian souls, who knew thereby that they could fly if they would, flattered us all. Because men had to enter some section of the fighting services thousands chose to fly and fight who otherwise would not have been tempted off the firmer elements of land and sea. They conquered the first nausea of fear, and learned to live with danger as with a wife. They tumbled above us and we marvelled, not taking anywise into account the war-sting which started them, bidding neither sit nor stand but go. One is not sorry that the guns speak no more. One is not sorry that the night-bombers and Zeppelins have ceased to menace us. But the emptiness of the heavens by day has its sadness now in France, its human wanness and melancholy. One realises that the war brought out the flier--as it were before his time, and we must wait long ere we see in peace the state of air society which he prefigured. Down below the airmen trudged heavy-footed men. The airmen were literally supermen; those below were a sort of undermen. In heavily weighted boots, with backs bent and not straightened by war's routine, with clumsily encumbered bodies, trudged under-humanity, through mud, along gulleys, into holes and pits, down into subterranean chambers. The underman enjoyed no human exaltation except occasionally at the prospect of getting free; he had no mercurial lightness on his heels, no rapid quicksilver of mounting imagination; instead, he was gripped downward and held till he died or there was peace. It used to be a common saying that from the moment you stepped off at Havre you were a slave. You walked in the chains of the war. Men's hearts hardened. They told themselves they wanted nothing and cared nothing. Their minds fell victims to a dull passivity or false boisterousness. They banished the bright ego and took up with a Cerberus, yowled the dog-language of the army, and got selfishly irate over biscuits and slops and bully-beef. They grew more and more dirty and came out in boils. Coarse hair grew apace, brows grew lower, hands that had any cunning in them grew to mere claws and clutches, eyes dullened, and the ear-gate stood ajar for the sound of animal noises and animal confessions. The war was a Bacchanalia for the animal in man.