art. The child
has heard nothing of the apocalyptic visions, and does not know Poe,
Ambrose Bierce, or Kipling. He is concerned only with his own sensations,
and you listen to him because you have had such dreams, and he recalls a
dark adventure you had forgotten.

But the difficulty in the writing of such stories is that the narrator,
as soon as he begins, becomes conscious of the successful methods of
other men. I have been reading a number of War stories published
recently, and it was painful to see how many were ruined by Kipling
before this War began. Kipling was original, and his tricks of manner,
often irritating, and his deplorable views of human society, were usually
carried off by his genius for observation, and the spontaneity of the
drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering
in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious.
As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate
jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his
genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and
sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes
pollinated from India. They have another defect, too, though it would be
unfair to blame Kipling for that when it may be seen blossoming with the
unassuming modesty of a tulip in any number of _Punch_. I mean that
amusing gravity of the snob who is sure of the exclusive superiority of
his caste mark, with not the trace of a smile on his face, and at a time
when all Europe is awakening to the fact that it sentenced itself to ruin
when it gave great privileges to his kind of folk in return for the
guidance of what it thought was a finer culture, but was no more than a
different accent. It was, we are now aware, the mere Nobodies who won the
War for us; and yet we still meekly accept as the artistic representation
of the British soldier or sailor an embarrassing guy that would disgrace
pantomime. And how the men who won must enjoy it!

XV. Waiting for Daylight

NOVEMBER 9, 1918. I read again my friend's last field service postcard,
brief and enigmatic, and now six weeks old. I could find in it no more
than when it first came. Midnight struck, and I went to the outer gate.
The midnight had nothing to tell me. Not that it was silent; we would not
call it mere silence, that brooding and impenetrable darkness charged
with doom unrevealed, which is now our si