“It won’t spread here,” Dainton answered in happy forgetfulness of earlier speeches against the corrupting influence of those Russian and German agents who controlled British trades unions. “Our people are too sensible. You’re very gloomy, George! This won’t do at all. Drink up that cocktail and let’s begin our dinner.”
As I looked round on the scene of peace, now officially proclaimed, I reflected that five years, all but a few days, had passed since I strolled on to the valley-terrace at Chepstow, to smoke a cigarette between dances; it seemed less than five weeks since Colonel Farwell walked diffidently out of the darkness to say that, while war had not yet been declared, it was prudent for all officers to be in touch with their depots. They had gone, those first, in a spirit of routine enlivened by adventure; they were followed by men who went in a spirit of bewilderment clarified by sacrifice. The bewilderment passed; and the sacrifice turned to resignation. Soon the resignation became fatalism: every one went because every one else was going; none expected to come back, and, of those who went first, few were cheated of their expectation. Now we were celebrating the end of a war that dwarfed the campaigns of Napoleon to so many intermittent brawls.
I must have spoken the name, for my uncle caught at it eagerly:
“Seventeen-ninety-three, eighteen-fifteen,” he murmured. “Nineteen-fourteen, nineteen-nineteen. Napoleon ended the middle ages and changed the map. Have we begun anything, ended anything, changed anything? We spilt a paint-box over the atlas; but will the colours stick? Germany and Russia cancel out; the rest of us have to play for pennies instead of shillings; but have we ended war, have we ended the nineteenth century, have we done anything but lose a few pawns in the first moves?”
“We’d won everything at the armistice!,” I exclaimed. “The world was ready and willing to be disarmed, ready and willing to accept arbitration in place of war . . .”
“What election-cry has a chance against ‘revenge’?,” Bertrand demanded, with a glance of contempt towards the end of the table, when Dainton was arguing heatedly with the wine-waiter. “ ‘The red account is cast’; and Germany must pay. You and I know that we shall be the first to suffer. You and I know that these dolts are laying the foundations of the next war. You and I know that we have some misty world-vision and that we must work for a united states of Europe and a brotherhood of man. People won’t listen to us . . . yet. I shall be dead before you’ve cleared the first unbelievers out of the temple. Si monumentum requiris . . . George, George, this is a blacker day in the world’s history than the fourth of August.”
I have forgotten almost everything about that dinner except the sense of depression that grew deeper with every advance to gaiety on the part of my neighbours. We were spared speeches; but at the end our host called us to our feet for some toast which I did not hear. As I sat down, a kite’s-tail of coloured paper floated to us from the next table. A giant bunch of air-balloons was divided among eager hands. Crackers exploded; and a blare of tin trumpets punctuated the cheeping of wooden whistles. Perhaps I had spent too many hours that day in discussion that led nowhere: I suddenly felt that I was not in the mood for such artless merry-making.
“Si monumentum requiris . . .” Bertrand repeated.
At the table from which that tail of coloured paper had been thrown, I observed my old ally, Sir Philip Saltash, entertaining a party of friends. Dainton, in acknowledging a bow, informed us that Saltash had “done as much as any one to win the war”; and, in examining Saltash’s guests, I felt that the same tribute could be paid to each. Wilmot Dean, representing a government of new men and new methods, was resting a flushed face on the bare shoulder of a beautiful and, I should imagine, wholly brainless mannequin. Lord Lingfield, whose inclusion in the cabinet shewed that ministers were not indifferent to rank and lineage, was deep in conversation with a Balkan millionaire who had been naturalized in time to become private secretary to the needy holder of a sinecure. And any one with attention to spare had it unpityingly claimed by Mr. ‘Blob’ Wister, who had won the war by purchasing papers for the government.
I did not know the rest. I did not greatly want to know them. If I had been asked who won the war, I should have named David O’Rane rather than Wilmot Dean, Lord Loring rather than Lord Lingfield. Saltash’s guests may have given body and soul to victory; but their material position was founded on the war. After fine winnowing, we had arrived—in these ‘new men’—at the governing class of the immediate future: borrowing the name from ‘Blob’ Wister, they called themselves “realists”, and the coalitions of 1915 and 1916 had certainly intrigued the “sentimentalist” in politics to his extinction. Peace was too welcome for me to complain if it had been ushered in by ministers with more ambition than scruple. An obsolescent administration may have needed business brains to fit it for war; a democratic country cannot ignore its press-man and publicity-agent; and the rich hangers-on of a government only prove that bricks cannot be made without straw. Of the men who had won the war I only felt what Bertrand expressed bluntly: