“And no country will be allowed to remain neutral,” I added, “any more than Luxemburg and Greece in this war.”
“Until, at the end, when the human population of the earth has been destroyed with typhoid-germs and poison-gas, you’ll be left with two submersible flying-tanks chasing each other among the ice of the North Pole.”
He stirred the fire to a blaze and began once more to feed it with the papers from his private safe. I might have helped him; but this news of approaching peace seemed to relax all my muscles. For the first time in more than four years I could look beyond the work of the moment and see myself as an individual. When I was less tired, I could go back to the old life; and, for a man with a competence, life in England had been more than tolerable until the fourth of August, 1914.
“Don’t let’s talk about the next war,” I said. “Unless we can find a substitute . . .”
“People talked like that after Waterloo,” Hornbeck murmured.
“I expect they talked like that after the siege of Troy; but they always sowed their peace with the seeds of the next war.”
The night air was chilling the room; and Hornbeck interrupted his task of destruction to shut the window.
“Well, what kind of peace do you want now?,” he asked, with a smile half mocking, half wistful playing over his tired face. “This war followed inevitably on the war of ’70, which followed inevitably on the nationalist wars, which followed inevitably on Napoleon’s conquests. Will you divide the world now according to nationalities? I’m afraid you’ll have new wars in Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, Austria, Turkey; not to mention Egypt and India. People talk about a United States of the World; but, when you’ve been getting the last ounce out of national spirit for all these years, you won’t persuade white men to take their orders from an international committee of dagos.”
I turned from the wall-map to the official estimates of casualties in all countries.
“When people remember what a bloody business war is . . .” I began.