ely "polite," and can by no stretch
of imagination be rightly called "conversation." It consists for the
most part in exaggerated complimentary remarks--which, it is hoped,
will please you--or in one person waiting impatiently while the other
person relates all he and his family have been doing until he, in his
turn, can seize a momentary pause for breath to begin the whole recent
history of his own affairs in detail. But neither of them is really at
all interested in the story of the other's doings--you can see that in
their eyes, in the kind of fixed smile of simulated interest with which
they listen, the while they furtively take note of the grey hair you
are trying to hide, the shirt button which will leave its moorings if
something isn't done for it before long, the stain on your waistcoat
denoting egg-for-breakfast and an early hurry--all the things, in fact,
which really interest them to an extent and are far more thrilling
anyway than the things you are telling them in so much thraldom on your
own part and with so much gusto.

Some people are artificial through and through; it may be said of them
that they are only really real when they are having a tooth pulled.
But the majority of people only hide themselves behind a kind of crust
of artificiality; beneath that crust they were real live men and women.
And the war--thank God! (that is to say, if one ever can thank God for
the war)--cracked that crust until it fell away, and was trampled under
the feet of real men and women living real lives, honestly with
themselves and _vis-a-vis_ the world. That is one of the reasons why
the war has made social life a so much more vital and interesting
state. Of course, there are some people who still strive to revive the
social life of "masks," but they are the people whose crust of
artificiality was only cracked--or rather chipped--by the horror and
reality of war. War never really reached them, except through their
stomachs and their motor cars, or perhaps in the excuse it gave them
for flirting half-heartedly with some really useful human labour. They
never went "over the top" in spirit, and their point of view still
reeks of the point of view of the farthest back of the base. These
people will be more real when they are _dead_ than while they are
alive--if you can understand my meaning? But thank Heaven! their ranks
are thinned. They belong to the "back of beyond," to the "frumps," the
"washouts," and the "back