"You hear, messiou?" said the general. "It is no longer the same; it will never be the same again. The padre will not be there to talk to us about Scotland and to abuse bishops. And I have no longer got my gramophone, messiou. I left it to the regiment with all my records. The life of the soldier is one of great hardship, messiou, but we had a jolly little Mess with the Lennox, hadn't we?"
The doctor appeared at the entrance to the tent.
"Come in, O'Grady, come in. Late as usual; there is no creature so wicked and so dense as you."
The lunch was very like those of the good old times—for there were already good old times in this War, which was no longer in the flower of its youth—the orderlies handed boiled potatoes and mutton with mint sauce, and Aurelle had a friendly little discussion with the doctor.
"When do you think war will be finished, Aurelle?" said the doctor.
"When we win," cut in the general.
But the doctor meant the League of Nations: he did not believe in a final war.
"It is a fairly consistent law of humanity," he said, "that men spend about half their lives at war. A Frenchman, called Lapouge, calculated that from the year 1100 to the year 1500, England had been 207 years at war, and 212 years from 1500 to 1900. In France the corresponding figures would be 192 and 181 years."
"That is very interesting," said the general.
"According to that same man Lapouge, nineteen million men are killed in war every century. Their blood would fill three million barrels of 180 litres each, and would feed a fountain of blood running 700 litres an hour from the beginning of history."