“Disreputable old wrecks we are!,” he muttered with a glance of sour and comprehensive disfavour from Lord Crawleigh to Sir Roger Dainton and from Sir Roger Dainton to Raymond Stornaway. The grey November light, shining on a row of bent backs and haggard faces, made us older than our years. “We’ve _had_ our chance,” he continued; “I believe the only way of stopping war is to have conscription for all men and women over fifty and to call up the oldest classes first.” “So that you could hear men of thirty boasting that they’d ‘given’ two grandfathers to the army?,” asked Raymond. “They’d still be of an age to be kicked, if they tried that kind of cant. . . . No, but I’m sufficiently sick of everything to feel it’s indecent for me to be alive when mere children are wearing black for men who might have been my grandsons. Eighty-four. . . . Most of my friends will tell you I’ve lived twenty years too long; and, on my soul, I believe they’re right.” “You said something of the kind on the day war broke out,” I reminded him. “Now that it’s all over . . .?” Bertrand gathered himself for attack, towering over me with his hands on his hips till the silence of the room daunted him. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned, with a savage tug at his black walrus-moustache, to shake hands with his neighbours: “I don’t detect any great reason for optimism. Um, Crawleigh. You English have seen a million or two of your best men killed or wounded. . . . Whose child is that? . . . You’ve seen new debt piled up to the tune of thousands of millions. . . . How do, Lady Crawleigh? . . . I’m an Irishman. . . . Violet, my dear! . . . And a liberal. I’ve seen liberalism stamped out of existence and the Irish party broken. . . . Lady Dainton, your humble servant. Find me a seat, George, there’s a good boy.” Most of us knew my uncle well enough to imagine his violent anger if any one else had dared to be so despondent. My father-in-law, however, felt obliged to pick up the gage. “You mean that we should be no worse off,” he suggested, “if the Germans had drawn up the terms and we had accepted them?” “Not quite,” Bertrand conceded, “not quite. . . . I beg your pardon, Barbara my dear, I didn’t see you! . . . If you know your Bible, my dear Crawleigh, you’ll recollect that a Jew called Samson tried to get level with the Philistines by pulling a heavy roof down on their heads. He got level; but he paid for it with his life. Some one pulled away the pillars that had been holding up our civilization for Heaven knows how many centuries. Credit, commerce, law and order, faith and morals, production, exchange, distribution: they’ve all toppled; and they’ve toppled on the heads of _all_ of us. You’ll see as soon as peace really sets in. No! No, Crawleigh! This war should have ended two years ago, while there were still a few tiles left on the roof!”