It was idle to vent one's wrath and contempt upon
statesmen who could not settle their quarrels with their brains, for
the centuries that stood between the present and utter barbarism were
too few to have accomplished more than the initial stages of a true
civilization. No doubt a thousand years hence these stages would
appear as rudimentary as the age of the Neanderthals had seemed to the
twentieth century. And as man made progress so did he rarely outstrip
it. So far he had done less for himself than for what passed for
progress and the higher civilization. Naturally enough, when the
Frankenstein monster heaved itself erect and began to run amok with
seven-leagued boots, all the pigmies could do was to revert
hysterically to Neanderthal methods and use the limited amount of
brains the intervening centuries had given them, to scheme for victory.
A thousand years hence the Frankenstein might be buried and man's brain
gigantic. Then and then only would civilization be perfected, and the
savagery and asininity of war a blot on the history of his race to
which no man cared to refer. But that was a long way off. When a
man's country was in danger there was nothing to do but fight.
Noblesse oblige. And fight without growling and whining. Clavering
had liked army discipline, sitting in filthy trenches, wounds,
hospitals, and killing his fellow men as little as any decent man; but
what had these surly grumblers expected? To fight when they felt like
it, sleep in feather beds, and shoot at targets? Disillusionment!
Patriotism murdered by Truth! One would think they were fighting the
first war in history.

It was not the war they took seriously but themselves.

Like other men of his class and traditions, Clavering had emerged from
the war hoping it would be the last of his time, but with his ego
unbruised, his point of view of life in general undistorted, and a
quick banishment of "hideous memories." (His chief surviving memory
was a hideous boredom.) One more war had gone into history. That he
had taken an infinitesimal part in it instead of reading an account of
it by some accomplished historian was merely the accident of his years.
As far as he could see he was precisely the man he was before he was
sent to France and he had only unmitigated contempt for these "war
reactions" in men sound in limb and with no derangement of the ductless
glands.

As for the women, when they began to talk their intellectual