It was not on the Rhine. There was a general exodus of all officers who could get “demobbed” on any claim or pretext, the small Army of Occupation settled down to a routine life, without adventure, and the world’s interest shifted to Paris, where the fate of Europe was being settled by a company of men with the greatest chance in history. I became a wanderer in a sick world. BOOK THREE: BUILDERS OF PEACE BOOK THREE: BUILDERS OF PEACE I Those of us who had been in exile during the years of war and now returned to peace found that England had changed in our absence. We did not know this new England. We did not understand its spirit or its people. Nor did they understand the men who came back from the many fronts of war, by hundreds of thousands, now that demobilisation had become a spate after murmurings that were loud with the menace of revolt from men who had been long patient. These “_revenants_,” the men who came back out of the Terror, were so many Rip van Winkles (of a youthful kind), looking round for the companions of their boyhood, going to old places, touching old stones, sitting by the same fireside, but with a sense of ghostliness. A new generation had arrived since 1914. The children had become boys and girls, the girls had grown into womanhood precociously. There were legions of “flappers” in London and other big cities, earning good wages in Government offices and factories, spending most of their money on the adornment of their prettiness, self-reliant, audacious, out for the fun of life, and finding it. The tragedy of the war had not touched them. It had been a great “lark” to them. They accepted the slaughter of their brothers or their fathers light-heartedly, after a few bursts of tears and a period of sentiment in which pride was strongest. They had grown up to the belief that a soldier is generally killed or wounded and that he is glad to take the risk, or, if not, ought to be, as part of the most exciting and enjoyable game of war. Women had filled many of the jobs which formerly were the exclusive possession of men, and the men coming back looked at these legions of women clerks, tram-conductors, ticket-collectors, munition-workers, plough-girls, and motor-drivers with the brooding thought that they, the men, had been ousted from their places. A new class had arisen out of the whirlpool of social upheaval. The Profiteers, in a large way of business, had prospered exceedingly out of the supply and demand of massacre. The Profiteer’s wife clothed herself in furs and jewels. The Profiteer’s daughters were dancing by night and sleeping by day. The farmers and the shop-keepers had made a good thing out of war. They liked war, so long as they were untouched by air-raids or not afflicted by boys who came back blind or crippled. They had always been Optimists. They were Optimists now, and claimed a share in the merit of the Victory that had been won by the glorious watchword of “business as usual.” They hoped