As I looked round on the scene of peace, now officially proclaimed, I reflected that five years, all but a few days, had passed since I strolled on to the valley-terrace at Chepstow, to smoke a cigarette between dances; it seemed less than five weeks since Colonel Farwell walked diffidently out of the darkness to say that, while war had not yet been declared, it was prudent for all officers to be in touch with their depots. They had gone, those first, in a spirit of routine enlivened by adventure; they were followed by men who went in a spirit of bewilderment clarified by sacrifice. The bewilderment passed; and the sacrifice turned to resignation. Soon the resignation became fatalism: every one went because every one else was going; none expected to come back, and, of those who went first, few were cheated of their expectation. Now we were celebrating the end of a war that dwarfed the campaigns of Napoleon to so many intermittent brawls. I must have spoken the name, for my uncle caught at it eagerly: “Seventeen-ninety-three, eighteen-fifteen,” he murmured. “Nineteen-fourteen, nineteen-nineteen. Napoleon ended the middle ages and changed the map. Have we begun anything, ended anything, changed anything? We spilt a paint-box over the atlas; but will the colours stick? Germany and Russia cancel out; the rest of us have to play for pennies instead of shillings; but have we ended war, have we ended the nineteenth century, have we done anything but lose a few pawns in the first moves?” “We’d won _everything_ at the armistice!,” I exclaimed. “The world was ready and willing to be disarmed, ready and willing to accept arbitration in place of war . . .” “What election-cry has a chance against ‘revenge’?,” Bertrand demanded, with a glance of contempt towards the end of the table, when Dainton was arguing heatedly with the wine-waiter. “‘The red account is cast’; and Germany must pay. You and I know that we shall be the first to suffer. You and I know that these dolts are laying the foundations of the next war. You and I know that we have some misty world-vision and that we must work for a united states of Europe and a brotherhood of man. People won’t listen to us . . . yet. I shall be dead before you’ve cleared the first unbelievers out of the temple. _Si monumentum requiris_ . . . George, George, this is a blacker day in the world’s history than the fourth of August.”