"Then I hope you'll get rapid promotion," I said. "The sooner you cease to be a Second Lieutenant the better."
He laughed a little bitterly.
"My dear George, it's only a question of time. I may get wounded, of course, but otherwise all this year's vintage will be destroyed. You've been snatching at straws of hope—the Russian steam-roller, the Italian diversion in the south, the starvation of Germany, the socialist revolution, the smash up of credit ... what's the latest? Oh, the capture of Constantinople. That's not going to end the war. You'll only get peace by killing Germans, and they'll kill as many of you as you kill of them. The people who may possibly survive will be the fellows who enlist about two years hence. If you've got a cigarette, I'll steal it."
I handed him my case.
"You're tolerably cheerful about it," I remarked.
As he paused to light the cigarette, the flare of the match showed nothing but an expression of mild boredom.
"I'm neither one thing nor the other," he said. "I simply don't think about the war, it's too absurd! Millions of men, thousands of millions of money, chucked away in a night. And why? Because Germans breed like rabbits, scamper outside their own country and want still to be called Germans; and we won't let 'em. There's no quarrel between individual Germans and individual British—or wasn't, till they made swine of themselves in Belgium. It's the stupidest war in history. However, we're in and we must come out on top, otherwise our wives and sisters will be cut open. Hallo! here's the Club." He flung away his cigarette and stood for a moment looking up at the lighted doorway. "I wonder if I shall ever come here again?"
"Many times, I hope," said I, and with an indulgent smile he accompanied me in to dinner.
As we went upstairs to the smoking-room an hour later he told me—what indeed I had already heard from my sister Beryl—that Violet was expecting a child.