As that endless procession went past him once more, Dormer felt that he now knew of what its component parts were thinking. Australians, Canadians, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, English, they were thinking of nothing in particular. Like the mules that went with them, they went on because they couldn’t stop. Food and sleep each day was the goal. To stop would mean less food and sleep, mules and men knew that much, without use of the reasoning faculty. It had become an instinct. All the brilliant casuistry that had induced men to enlist was forgotten, useless, superseded. Even English soldiers were conscripts now, the War had won, had overcome any and every rival consideration, had made itself paramount, had become the end and the means as well. A man like Dormer, accustomed to an ordered and reasoned existence, who could have explained his every act up to August, 1914, by some good and solid reason, was as helpless as any. Stop the War? You wanted to go back half a century and alter all the political and business cliques in which it had been hatching. To alter those you wanted to be able to alter the whole structure of society in European countries, which kept those cliques in power, was obliged to have recourse to them, to get itself governed and financed. To do that you wanted to change Human Nature. Here Dormer’s imagination stopped dead. He was no revolutionary. No one was farther than he from being one. He only hated Waste. He had been brought up and trained to business, in an atmosphere of methodical neatness, of carefully foreseen and forestalled risks. Rather than have recourse to revolution he would go on fighting the Bosche. It was so much more real. Somewhere about the point at which he reached this conclusion, he heard, among the noise of the sporadic bombardment, Kavanagh’s voice: “‘Now that we’ve pledged each eye of blue And every maiden fair and true, And our green Island Home, to you The Ocean’s wave adorning, Let’s give one hip, hip, hip hurrah! And drink e’en to the coming day, When squadron, square, We’ll all be there, To meet the French in the morning!’ That’s the stuff to give the troops, Dormer!” But Dormer, although cheered, was not going to admit it. “You’d better go and sing it to the Seventy-Worst. They go in at dawn!” “Good luck to them. Listen to this: “‘May his bright laurels never fade Who leads our fighting Fifth Brigade, These lads so true in heart and blade, And famed for danger scorning; So join me in one hip hurrah! And drink e’en to the coming day, When squadron, square, We’ll all be there, To meet the French in the morning!’ How’s that for local colour. Is there a Fifth Brigade in to-morrow’s show? They’d like that.” “I bet they wouldn’t. Anyhow, it’s silly to repeat things against the French.” “Man, it’s a hundred years old.” “Like my uncle’s brandy.” “You and your uncle!”