_Nelson_: Ay, thus do little things Steal into my mind, too. But, ah my heart Knows not your calm philosophy!--There's one-- Come nearer to me, Hardy,--One of all, As you well guess, pervades my memory now; She, and my daughter--I speak freely to you. 'Twas good I made that codicil this morning That you and Blackwood witnessed. Now she rests Safe on the nation's honour.... THOMAS HARDY: _The Dynasts_. I On the morrow of the armistice the population of the emergency offices was sharply divided into those who wished to leave, but were required to stay, and those who wished to stay, but were required to leave. Though the raising of the blockade was almost automatic, the blockade departments took time to wind up; and the temporary officer was not infrequently demobilised several months before the temporary civil servant was released. These days of transition were a time of endless comings and goings, of unexpected returns and abrupt departures. Men who were thought to be dead reappeared suddenly from East and West Africa, from Palestine and India, demanding news of their scattered and decimated friends; women who had been lost to view for nearly five years emerged from hospitals, offices and factories; and all of a stricken generation who had survived set themselves once more to make a career or a livelihood. By now they were in age nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, uprooted and unsettled by the war, with greater experience and smaller hope, more resignation and less resiliency. The time ahead of them was ten years shorter than when they came down from their universities; many had married and begotten children; they could not long afford to wait; their "common problem" was no longer "to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be,--but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to" their "means; a very different thing!"