chief is fresh in his mind. You are for soothing him with syrups. I don't agree with you. Most of the people I know are already following exactly your prescription. Their nervous unrest is due to the fact that they are trying to have a good time when their consciences tell them that they deserve a thrashing."
"Come, now," I interrupted rather hotly, "don't you admit that the Germans were responsible for the war? When they struck at civilization, what were we to do?"
"Strike back of course," said Thorpe coolly; "but that, I trust, doesn't make it impossible for you to 'regret the entire incident.' The crowning stupidity of the ages might, I should think, without lifting the onus from the chief aggressors, be viewed by all the participants with a considerable measure of regret. I myself find the regretful mood morally so illuminating that I dislike to see it giving way so soon in this country to the post-war festivity. In the case of men who have been in the trenches and hospitals, perhaps a little riot of pleasure and relaxation is as useful as a hypodermic after surgical shock. If I were in Russia, France, or England, probably I should prescribe counterirritants, lenitives, sedatives. Imaginations there have been cut into deeply enough to hold
