Just after prayers he met Tester on his way back from supper with the Chief.
"Hullo! I have been looking for you," he said; "come for a stroll round the courts."
"Well," said Tester, as soon as they were out of earshot, "what do you make of it?"
"Pretty awful."
"Yes, I suppose you have seen a good many ideals go tumbling down. All our generation has been sacrificed; of course it is inevitable. But it is rather hard. The older men have seen some of their hopes realised; we shall see none. I don't know when this war will end; not just yet, I think. But whenever it does, just as far as we are concerned the days of roses will be over. For the time being art and literature are dead. Look at the rotten stuff that's being written to-day. At the beginning we were deceived by the tinsel of war; Romance dies hard. But we know now. We've done with fairy tales. There is nothing glorious in war, no good can come of it. It's bloody, utterly bloody. I know it's inevitable, but that's no excuse. So are rape, theft, murder. It's a bloody business. Oh, Caruthers, my boy, the world will be jolly Philistine the next few years. Commercialism will be made a god."
"Do you mean there is going to be nothing for us after the war?" said Gordon.
"Not for you or me; for the masses, perhaps. No one can go through this without having his senses dulled, his individuality knocked out of him. It will take at least twenty years to recover what we have lost, and there won't be much fire left in you and me by then. Oh, I can tell you I am frightened of what's coming after. I can't face it. Of course there may be a great revival some day. Do you remember what Rupert Brooke said in Second Best about there waiting for the 'great unborn some white tremendous daybreak'? That's what may happen. But our generation will have been sacrificed for it. I suppose we should not grumble. But we only live once. Do you remember that day of the Radley match, and what I said about Oxford? I longed for Oxford. I wanted to begin life over again, to sweep out the past. I was beginning to realise what beauty meant. And then down comes the war. And I don't suppose I shall ever have a chance now. I don't know whether there is an after life or not, but if there is, I shall cut a pretty sorry figure, if there is going to be a judgment. Well, it is my own fault. I put things off too late. But I should have been a different chap, I think, if——"
Foster's voice rang out across the night:
"Come on, you two. What are you doing out there? The coffee's boiling over. Buck up."
"Right you are."