“Yes,” said Hartington, “but work with what object? Think of it: the work we do from day to day gives precious little satisfaction in itself. I suppose everyone—no matter in what line of business—has one supreme ambition that overshadows all other ambitions. But in most lives, while a man waits for his Great Attainment he is kept going by smaller successes, intermediate achievements that have at least some of the qualities of permanence. The statesman waiting to pass his Great Reform passes smaller measures that are something—something that stands. Or the novelist writing his intermediate novels, or the architect designing the houses that are to precede his Great Design, or the shopkeeper, even, opening a new branch here and a new branch there, stepping-stones to the Great Store of his dream, but each a substantial achievement in itself; all these people know that, even if the Great Dream comes to naught, they have constructed something more durable than themselves. But the naval officer accomplishes nothing by the way. I suppose Guns is glad if a battle practice goes well, but it all ends in a round of drinks; no one is the happier for it. No one is a whit the happier for anything we do.”
“The practical economists would tell you that we are indirectly constructive because we protect commerce,” John said.
“The boy who frightens birds with his clacker is constructive in that sense. So is the hangman with his rope. No, that’s too shallow a foundation on which to build comfort. All our eggs are in one basket. War is everything to us. And when the war is over and we can say there will not be another war for fifty years, perhaps a hundred years—certainly not in our time, what then? How are we going to live through routine? What heart shall we put into preparation for a remote possibility?”
“And we shall still be young men.”
“We shall have all our lives before us.”
John rested his head on his hand as if he were tired. “And even now,” he said, “when at least this wonderful achievement of ours is in the future and not in the past, it seems a poor thing to me. I may be a Sub when it comes, or I may be a Lieutenant—anyhow, a cog in the machine.”
“The Lord knows when it’s coming. We may be Admirals by then.”
John thought. He was perceiving a revealing truth. “I don’t want to be an Admiral,” he said.
“But that, in a naval officer, is heresy and disaster,” Hartington answered, with a hidden smile. “You ought to want to be an Admiral. At the age of twelve you promised, as it were, to love, honour, and obey.”
“I did want to be an Admiral—then.”