I broke in on the litany to say: “Good for you, Jimmy, old boy! Glad to know you. Let’s shake hands.” He sprang from his seat on the outskirts of the group, but before he could reach me a great, brawny paw was stretched forward by a blue-eyed young Hercules sitting nearer me, which grasped my fingers as if in a vise. There was then a scramble of handshaking, each of the bunch asserting his claim for recognition, like very small children. The older man alone held aloof, sitting by himself, scowling, hard-faced, cross-legged, kicking out a big foot with a rapid, nervous rhythm. It was he who, when the handshaking was over, snarled out the question, “What’s the matter with your eye?” I told them the story of how I lost it. I told it as simply as I could, while working in a fair share of the strong color which I hoped would arrest their attention. It did. In all my experience of men coming back into life from the state which is so expressively known as dead drunk it was the first time I ever saw them listen with avidity to any voice but that of the inner man. What is there about war which speaks with this authority? Where did it get its power to go to the hidden man of the heart, that subliminal self with which modern speculation has been so busy, and shift him from off his age-long base? It is commonly said that, whatever our personal vicissitudes, human nature remains the same; but though that may be true of the past, I doubt if it will be true of the future. War on the scale on which we are waging it has already changed human nature. It has changed it as the years change a baby to a boy and a boy to a man. It has lifted human nature up, drawn out of it what we never supposed to be there, freed it from its slavery to time. It has to a large degree reversed the processes of time as it has reversed the usages of sex. We have seen youth doing the work of maturity, maturity that of youth, women that of men, men that of women. We have seen cowards transformed into heroes, rotters into saints, stupid, idiotic ne’er-do-wells into saviors of mankind. We shall never go back again to the helpless conviction that youth must grow slowly into age, only to have age decay into ugliness and senility. This kind of foolish, useless progress may still go on for an indefinite time to come, but we shall work against it as against something contrary to the highest possibilities of nature. Since we have thrown off our mental shackles in great moments, we shall see that we can do the same in small, and, having emerged on a higher plane, we shall stay there. Staying there, we shall doubtless go on in time to a higher plane still—a plane on which the mighty works that are now wrought in war will become feasible in peace. We are not on that plane yet; but if the advance of the human race means anything we shall get there. It may take a thousand years; it may take more; it may take less; but in the mean time we must seize our blessings as we may.