and everyone else, had had but one thought--the overmastering
desire to get across the water. The glamour of the unknown was calling
them--the glory which the ignorant associate with war. Shop was
discussed openly and without shame. They were just a band of wild
enthusiasts, only longing to make good.

And then they had found what war really was--had sampled the reality of
the thing. One by one the band had dwindled, and the gaps had been
filled by strangers. Vane was sitting that night in the chair where
Jimmy Benton had always sat. . . . He remembered Jimmy lying across
the road near Dickebush staring up at him with sightless eyes. So had
they gone, one after another, and now, how many were left? And the
ones that had paid the big price--did they think it had been worth
while . . . now? . . . They had been so willing to give their all
without counting the cost. With the Englishman's horror of
sentimentality or blatant patriotism, they would have regarded with the
deepest mistrust anyone who had told them so. But deep down in each
man's heart--it was England--his England--that held him, and the glory
of it. Did they think their sacrifice had been worth while . . . now?
Or did they, as they passed by on the night wind, look down at the
seething bitterness in the country they had died for, and whisper
sadly, "It was in vain--You are pulling to pieces what we fought to
keep standing; you have nothing but envy and strife to put in its
place. . . . Have you not found the truth--yet? . . ."

Unconsciously, perhaps, but no less certainly for that, Vane was
drifting back into the same mood that had swayed him when he left
France. If what Ramage had said to him was the truth; if, at the
bottom of all the ceaseless bickering around, there was, indeed, a
vital conflict between two fundamentally opposite ideas, on the
settlement of which depended the final issue--it seemed to him that
nothing could avert the catastrophe sooner or later. It was against
human nature for any class to commit suicide--least of all the class
which for generations had regarded itself and been regarded as the
leading one. And yet, unless this thing did happen; unless
voluntarily, the men of property agreed to relinquish their private
rights, and sink their own interests for the good of the others, Ramage
had quite calmly and straightforwardly prophesied force. Apparently
the choice lay between suicide and murder. . . .

It all seemed s