"But, if you make it plain that you're not going to turn out shells, the killing stops automatically. If anyone would only come off the high horse and discuss concrete terms!"
Bertrand shrugged his shoulders and blew a scornful cloud of smoke.
"But people are getting used to the killing," he objected. "Three years ago—take anyone you like, Jim Loring; he could only die as the result of illness or an accident; even if there were a war, he wasn't a soldier. And it came like a sort of icy grip at the heart.... Nowadays a man becomes a soldier, whether he likes it or not, at eighteen. They get mown down at twenty instead of dying in their beds at seventy. And, as we grow accustomed to it, on my soul! George, we cease caring. People who come back from Paris tell me that there's a sort of hedonistic fatalism there—the restaurants never so full, money never so prodigally squandered. And anyone who knows anything knows that French credit in America is gone! So it isn't the calm, undismayed spirit of the Spartans at Thermopylæ; it's hysteria, carelessness. I've little doubt that with certain obvious differences you'd find the same thing in Berlin, assuredly you'd find it in Vienna. And we're getting it as badly."
It was due to the house in which I lived, but I suddenly realised that for a twelvemonth my emotions and interests had strayed from battlefields where thousands of men were daily laying down their lives for conflicting ideals; they were engrossed in the contemplation of a middle-aged bachelor, taking advantage of a blind man to carry off his wife. And Mrs. Tom Dainton, one of the earliest widows in the war, had married again. And Lady Maitland and her friends were wondering whether the risk of sudden death would nerve young Pentyre to marry Lady Sally Farwell.
"You're not very encouraging, Bertrand," I said.
"And yet, if you take a long view, you can see light," he rejoined unexpectedly. "The same scientific development which gives you chloroform gives you also poison gas; and, until you can disarm the world and make one nation of it under a single police, each war becomes more horrible than the last. At the same time international divisions and values may be becoming obsolete; the stronghold of Gibraltar may be the target for long-range Spanish guns; we may all of us thankfully throw down our weapons before we have to fight under changing conditions. You remember when war broke out, George? You were going to stay with Jim Loring, and I went to Paddington with you; we all shook our heads gravely and said, 'Thank God! We're an island!' Well, insularity would have been a source of greater weakness than strength, if the perfection of submarine warfare had gone pari passu with the development of trench warfare; and we may want to cry 'quits' before the submarine makes any further progress. Or take aerial transit. With any luck, George, you'll live to see mail and passenger services through the air all over the world. Germany can't get to the Far East without the leave of Russia, she can hardly get to America without sending her air-ships over someone else's territory. All these international barriers have changed their values."
George looked at his watch and dragged himself to his feet.
"I think I shall turn in. A discussion of this kind is very purifying for the soul, no doubt, but it doesn't get you any forrarder. Dear old Raney could usually be counted on to produce some Mark Tapley consolation at the end of the evening, but I doubt if even he's got any superabundance at the present time."
Bertrand emptied his tumbler, and we moved slowly towards the door.
"Have you heard anything of him since he went back?" I asked.