They remembered the terms of their service--these amateurs who had answered the call in early days. “For the duration of the war.” Well, the war was finished. There was to be no more fighting--and the wife wanted her man, and the mother her son. “Demobilisation” became the word of hope, and many men were sullen at the delays which kept them in exile and in servitude. The men sent deputations to their officers. The officers pulled wires for themselves which tinkled little bells as far away as the War Office, Whitehall, if they had a strong enough pull. One by one, friends of mine slipped away after a word of farewell and a cheerful grin. “Demobbed!... Back to civvies!... Home!” Harding was one of those who agonised for civil liberty, and release from military restraint, and the reason of it lay in his pocket-book, where there was the photograph of a pretty girl--his wife. We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about his state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me like him. I never met a man more English in all his characteristics, or more typical of the quality which belongs to our strength and our weakness. As a Harrow boy, his manners were perfect, according to the English code--quiet, unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of other people’s comfort in little things. According to the French Code, he would have been considered cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid. Certainly he had that touch of arrogance which is in all Englishmen of the old tradition. All his education and environment had taught him to believe that English civilisation--especially in the hunting set--was perfect and supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for those unlucky enough to be born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other race. He was not stupid by nature--on the contrary, he had sound judgment on matters within his range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of detail, but his vision was shut in by those frontiers of thought which limit public-school life in England and certain sets at Oxford who do not break free, and do not wish to break free, from the conventional formula of “good form,” which regulates every movement of their brain as well as every action of their lives. It is, in its way, a noble formula, and makes for aristocracy. My country, right or wrong; loyalty to King and State; the divine right of the British race to rule uncivilised peoples for their own good; the undoubted fact that an English gentleman is the noblest work of God; the duties of “_noblesse oblige_,” in courage, in sacrifice, in good manners, and in playing the game, whatever the game may be, in a sporting spirit.