and the world in speeches, poems, manifestoes, picture
posters, and newspaper articles. I have had the privilege of hearing
some of our ablest commanders talking about their work; and I have
shared the common lot of reading the accounts of that work given to the
world by the newspapers. No two experiences could be more different. But
in the end the talkers obtained a dangerous ascendancy over the rank and
file of the men of action; for though the great men of action are always
inveterate talkers and often very clever writers, and therefore cannot
have their minds formed for them by others, the average man of action,
like the average fighter with the bayonet, can give no account of
himself in words even to himself, and is apt to pick up and accept what
he reads about himself and other people in the papers, except when the
writer is rash enough to commit himself on technical points. It was not
uncommon during the war to hear a soldier, or a civilian engaged on war
work, describing events within his own experience that reduced to utter
absurdity the ravings and maunderings of his daily paper, and yet echo
the opinions of that paper like a parrot. Thus, to escape from the
prevailing confusion and folly, it was not enough to seek the company of
the ordinary man of action: one had to get into contact with the master
spirits. This was a privilege which only a handful of people could
enjoy. For the unprivileged citizen there was no escape. To him the
whole country seemed mad, futile, silly, incompetent, with no hope of
victory except the hope that the enemy might be just as mad. Only by
very resolute reflection and reasoning could he reassure himself that if
there was nothing more solid beneath their appalling appearances the
war could not possibly have gone on for a single day without a total
breakdown of its organization.

The Mad Election

Happy were the fools and the thoughtless men of action in those days.
The worst of it was that the fools were very strongly represented in
parliament, as fools not only elect fools, but can persuade men of
action to elect them too. The election that immediately followed the
armistice was perhaps the maddest that has ever taken place. Soldiers
who had done voluntary and heroic service in the field were defeated
by persons who had apparently never run a risk or spent a farthing that
they could avoid, and who even had in the course of the election to
apologize publicly for bawling Pacifi