“I had an uncle once who had some brandy. It was called ‘Napoleon,’ and was supposed to date from 1815. When he opened it, it was gone!” “There you are. That’s your materialism. But you can sing a song a hundred years old and find it’s not gone!” “It’s not a bad song. Only silly!” “Well, try something older: “‘We be Soldiers three, Lately come from the Low-Countree, _Pardonnez moi, je vous en prie_; We be Soldiers three.’ That’s nearer three hundred years old. That’s what fellows used to sing coming back from Ypres in those days!” “You talk as if we’d always been in and out of that mangey hole.” They both leaned on their elbows and gazed out of the tiny aperture, under the sacking, away over the sea-like ridges of pulverized mud, into the autumn evening. Between the rain-clouds, torn and shredded as if by the shell-fire, watery gleams were pouring, as though the heavens were wounded and bled. They spilled all over the jagged stonework of that little old medieval walled town, compact within its ramparts, for the third time in its history garrisoned by an English army. Kavanagh told him of it, but Dormer remained unimpressed. The history of the world that mattered began after the battle of Waterloo, with Commerce and Banking, Railway and Telegraph, the Education and Ballot Acts. Previous events were all very well, as scenery for Shakespeare’s plays or Wagner’s Operas. But otherwise, negligible. Yet the interlude did him good. He felt he had brought Kavanagh up short, in an argument, and he went to his night’s work with a lighter heart, and a strengthened confidence in himself. Of course, a few weeks later, the offensive was over, with the results he had foreseen, and with another result he was also not alone in foreseeing. Once back in rest, near Watten, he heard people talking in this strain, in G. office: “I suppose, sir, we shall go on fighting next year?” “Um--I suppose we shall. But perhaps some arrangement may be come to, first. There’s been a good deal of talk about Peace!”