"All the way talking of Russia, which, he says, is a sad place."—Pepys (Sept. 16th, 1664).

For three days our soldiers had been advancing over the devastated plain of the Somme. The crests of the innumerable shell-holes gave the country the appearance of a sort of frozen angry sea. The victors were advancing light-heartedly, as though preceded by invisible drums.

It was just at the time when the German army was swaying and tottering like a spent boxer awaiting the inevitable knock-out.

The Division had suffered heavily. All along the roads they had seen for the second time the sinister spectacle of villagers in flight and furniture-laden carts drawn by bowed women.

General Bramble had looked at the map with painful astonishment. He had been ordered to resist at all costs along the trenches on the green line; but when he reached the green line he had found no trenches; the Chinamen who were to dig them were still at sea somewhere near Suez.

Then, in a corner of a ruined village, they had come across a green felt hat and a fearsome moustache, which turned out reassuringly to belong to a rocking, tottering old man; and the Tommies—who are a primitive and adventurous race—were glad of the protection of this wild old totem of the Frankish tribe.

Then came motor-lorries to take the whole Division to the North, and through all the bustle and disorder they were conscious of a giant hand trying with prudent and skilful movements to rebuild the line.

"What can a general do?" the doctor had asked. "This war is too vast to be affected by human volition. Victory will come through tiny, decisive forces that have been at work since the beginning of the world. Tolstoy's Kutusoff used to go to sleep in Council—yet he beat Napoleon."

"However vast the scale of circumstance may be," said the colonel, "a man can change everything. A child cannot push a railway engine; yet he can start it if he opens the right throttle. A man has only to apply his will at the right place, and he will be master of the world. Your determinism is nothing more than a paradox. You build a cage round yourself and then are astonished you are a prisoner."

They were going forward rapidly. Aurelle, mounted on his old white Arab, trotted between the doctor and Colonel Parker.

"Don't hold your horse in so tightly, Messiou; give him the rein."

"But the road's full of holes, sir."

"My dear chap, when a man is on a horse, the horse is always the more intelligent of the pair."

He slackened his mare's rein to pass by a huge shell-hole, and began to talk of the peace that was at hand.

"The most difficult thing of all," he said, "will be to preserve in our victory the virtues that won it for us. Germany and Russia will do their best to corrupt us. A dishonoured nation always tries to bury its shame under the ruins of the victor's civilization. It's the device of Samson; it's as old as history itself. Rome, surrounded by vanquished and humbled nations, witnessed the lightning speed of Judaic preaching, which was so much like the Bolshevism of our day. The Russian ghettos of our capitals had their counterpart then in the Syrian dens that swarmed in the large ports; that is where the apostles of mystical communism preached most successfully. And Juvenal and Tacitus, who were gentlemen, had good reason to detest those anarchists, who condemned Roman civilization with the fanatical fury of a Trotsky."

"Yes," said the doctor, "the danger of these prolonged wars is that they end by making the most unusual habits generally acceptable. They require courage; and courage is a dangerous virtue, the mother of revolutions. And it is not easy to accustom a nation of warriors to render due obedience once more to second-rate politicians and profiteers. The oligarchy of parvenus which arose after the Punic wars could not be respected as the Roman senate had been. They possessed neither its hardihood nor its heroic parsimony. Bent only on beautiful slaves, perfumes and luxuries, they sacrificed their nascent influence to their passion for pleasure. They did not last long."

"It is quite certain," the colonel continued, "that in order to survive, an aristocracy must be hard upon itself. Moral discipline is indispensable to any class that wants to govern. If the industrial middle class is to take our place, it will have to be austere and hard. What sealed once and for all the doom of the Roman Senators was the decadent Greek culture of their sons. Those young noblemen affected an elegant dilettantism and toyed pleasantly with cultured demagogy. CÆsar in his youth, Aurelle, was rather like one of your comfortable cultured French middle-class Socialists. His lifelong dream was to lead a moderate reform party, but he was embittered by the attacks of the Roman patricians. He is a type against whom our Public Schools protect us pretty well. We also have our decadent young lords, but the contempt of their own generation keeps them from doing much harm."

He stopped in order to salute a magpie—for he was very superstitious—pointed with his cane to a tank that lay buried on its back in the sand like a defeated tortoise, and went on:

"Do you think you will have a revolution in France after the war? If you do, I shall be very much surprised. Up till now the remembrance of 1793 has kept us looking with apprehension towards France as the danger-spot of Europe. To-day we realize our mistake.

"1793 made your country more conservative than any other, by giving your peasants the possession of the soil. It will probably be seen some years hence that the Russian Revolution has also had the same effect. The revolution will end when the Red armies return to Moscow and some unemployed Bonapartsky has the Soviets dispersed by his grenadiers. Then the moujiks who have acquired the national property will form the first layer of a respectable liberal bourgeois republic."

"Unless," said Aurelle, "Bonapartsky, having tasted the sweets of victory, sets out to conquer Europe with the help of his trusty grenadiers. Between the Terror and 'the respectable republic' there were twenty years of war, sir."

"The most terrible of all revolutions," began the doctor, "will be the English one. In France the intellectual is popular; the tribune of the people is a bearded professor with the kindest of hearts. In England the people's commissary will be a hard, clean-shaven, silent, cruel man."

"That may be," said the colonel; "but he will find more silent and still harder men up against him. If you think we are going to lie down and submit like the fatalist nobles of Petrograd, you are mistaken."

"You, sir? And why the devil should you defend business men and profiteers whom you are never tired of sending to perdition?"

"I shall not be defending profiteers, but a form of society which I hold to be necessary. The institutions which our ancestors have adopted after six thousand years' experience are worth ten times more than the systems of foolish and boastful hotheads. I stand always for what is."

With a sweeping gesture the doctor pointed to the twisted, rusty wire, the shattered walls, the mangled trees and the dense harvest of wooden crosses that rose from the barren soil.

"Allow me," he said, "to express the heartfelt admiration I feel for this venerable civilization of yours, and let me contemplate the fruits of these wise institutions which six thousand years have consecrated for you. Six thousand years of war, six thousand years of murder, six thousand years of misery, six thousand years of prostitution; one half of mankind busy asphyxiating the other half; famine in Europe, slavery in Asia, women sold in the streets of Paris or London like matches or boot-laces—there is the glorious achievement of our ancestors. It is well worth dying to defend, I must confess!"

"Yes, doctor," replied Aurelle; "but there are two sides to the question: six thousand years of reform, six thousand years of revolt, six thousand years of science, six thousand years of philosophy——"

"Now don't you run away with the idea that I'm a revolutionary. As far as I am concerned, the movements of men interest me no more than those of the spiders or the dogs I am so fond of observing. I know that all the speeches in the world will not prevent men from being jealous monkeys always greedy for food, females and bright stones. It is true that they know how to deck out their desires with a somewhat brilliant and delusive ideology, but it is easy for an expert to recognize the instinct beneath the thought. Every doctrine is an autobiography. Every philosophy demands a diagnosis. Tell me the state of your digestion, and I shall tell you the state of your mind."

"Oh, doctor, if that is so, life is not worth living."

"That, my boy, depends entirely upon the liver, as they say."

Young Dundas, who had just reined up level with them, interposed:

"My God, my God," he said, "how you chaps do love talking! Why, I once had a discussion myself at Oxford with one of those johnnies in a bowler hat and ready-made tie who go round and make speeches in public squares on Saturday afternoons. I had stopped to listen to him on my way back from a bathe. He was cursing the aristocracy, the universities, and the world in general. Well, after about five minutes' talking, I went right up to him and said, 'Off with your coat, my friend; let's go into the matter thoroughly.'"

"And did you convince him, Dundas?"

"It wasn't very difficult, Messiou, because, honestly, I could use my left better than he could."