being filled by a lad who has not been vitiated by military life, and has nothing to unlearn. Good morning!"
And the young officers, after a statement like that, went home with swear-words learnt in Flanders, and said, "That's the reward of patriotism, eh? Well, we seem to have been fooled, pretty badly. Next time we shan't be so keen to strew the fields of death with our fresh little corpses."
These words, all this murmur from below, did not reach those who sat in High Places. They were wonderfully complacent, except when outbreaks of violence, or the cessation of labour, shocked them with a sense of danger. They arranged Peace celebrations before the Peace, Victory marches when the fruits of Victory were as bitter as Dead Sea fruit in the mouths of those who saw the ruin of the world; and round a Council Table in Paris statesmen of Europe abandoned all the ideals for which the war had been fought by humble men, and killed the hopes of all those who had looked to them as the founders of a new era of humanity and common-sense.
