Whitaker, in its "list of London Clubs," describes my own as "Social": that is to say, that I and my fellow-members have no common bond of occupation or interest other than that of pleasant good-fellowship. We are drawn from all professions, and this gives me an opportunity I value highly, namely, that of hearing scraps of the "shop" of other men when I am bored to death with my own. Saturday nights, when there is no morrow's issue of my paper to "put to bed," usually find me in the smoking-room behind my Pall Mall or Evening Standard, with a few other non-weekenders sitting rather widely apart also behind their papers, none of us so engrossed in the news that we are unaware of each other, but using the journals as protective cover. Occasionally we all drop them to converse; more frequently two or more will engage in conversation with the others interjecting sniping-shots across the room; and it is all rather interesting and quite unexciting and very much go-as-you-please.

On a Saturday evening early in June I was sitting after this fashion, half reading, half listening to Ronald Mowbray's remarks on some boxing match or other. Mowbray's talk about boxing is sometimes rather good. He was a known man of his hands long before the sport (if you can always call it that nowadays) became quite so deadly intensive both physically and financially. Moreover, his training as a sculptor has given him a good deal of knowledge of the fundamental mechanics of the human framework, and how a slight prolongation of the heel-bone can make a Deer-foot or length of humerus a lightning hitter.

"Just at present I don't think Nature's provided the world with a real heavy-weight," he was saying. "Not the real John Hopley kind, I mean. It takes more than size. You see, it doesn't matter how hard you could hit the other fellow if he gets his in first."

"But surely Wells is quick enough for you, isn't he?" said Jack Beresford. His newspaper was on his knee.

"Oh, yes, Wells is fast. I'm not saying that speed's everything. But it's nearly everything nowadays, even for a heavy. That's why half these giants would be simply at the mercy of a comparatively light fellow like Carpentier."

Over against the window bay a Globe was dropped an inch. Cyril Turner's eye was seen over it. He is in the Home Office, quite high up, and is an untrammeled sort of spirit when he leaves Whitehall for the freer air of Piccadilly.

"That's true of other things besides boxing," he interjected.

Mowbray turned. "What is?"

"What you're saying about weight and speed. Labor's discovered it too."

"I don't quite know what you mean, but if I've said something wiser than I intended——" said Mowbray, claiming it if he had.

"Well, Labor has discovered it. Look at the way they strike nowadays. The New Strike's as different as chalk and cheese from the Old. Totally different methods—more scientific altogether. Masters and men used to stand up foot to foot like Smithfield Butchers and slog till neither of them could stand. Pure battering-ram principle, and the fellow who won wasn't much better off than the one who lost. But now it's all swiftness and surprise. No warning—just what you'd call a lightning punch where it's going to hurt most and then dance away again. That's why they go for the transport and postal services and all the distributing machinery instead of stopping production. It paralyzes just the same. Solar plexus business. And swiftness is the secret, as you say, not brute strength any more."

Another paper was lowered. It was Hay's Evening News. Hay is a retired Major of Gunners, and I have bought very good cigars from him and very passable port.

"And that isn't all either," he said. "It goes far beyond strikes."

"War?" said somebody. Everybody in the Club knows Hay and his talk.

Hay nodded. "You'll see where speed comes in then—speed and the absence of warning. The nation that can get a thousand bombing-planes into the air first will be able to do what it likes with the others."

"Oh, come, Major!" somebody laughed. "That's rather looking for trouble, isn't it?"

"No good shutting your eyes to it," Hay returned. "Turner said something about transport just now. They're talking a lot about relieving London's traffic congestion. Well, it wants relieving; but do you know how I'd relieve it? I'd dig new ways ... well underground. Big ones, to hold plenty of people. Tube Stations won't be much good the next time. And I'd start digging them now."

"Hay's had a hint from the League of Nations."

"Well, I'm a League of Nations man up to a point. Up to this point—that the next show's going to be so unutterably ghastly that a generation that leaves anything undone to prevent it ought to be wiped off the map—anything undone, you understand, whether you personally believe in it or whether you don't. We're only at the beginning of the New War, and it will be far more 'lightning' than any of Turner's New Strikes."

"Democracy'll prevent it."

"As it's doing in Russia, eh? Just as likely to make it. Democracy's got such damnably high-falutin ideals and so little sense of ordinary decency. For an inhuman thing that belongs to everybody and pleases nobody give me the Will of the People. If you read your history you'll find that hot air's usually followed by bloodshed. And they won't stick at much. Personally I prefer a King's war with guns to a democratic one with black typhus germs."

"Sunny soul, our Major, isn't he?" somebody laughed again.

"Well," said Hay, disappearing behind his paper again, "a thousand bombing-planes will do it the next time. I hope we aren't forgetting how to make 'em, and use 'em. Waiter, bring me a whisky-and-soda, please."