ad been
removed and the fish-course had not yet been served. He had the leisure
to talk. "You men who have been in the Army," he said testily,
"especially those of you who have gained your promotion rapidly, always
speak as if the rest of us had been receivers of stolen goods until you
put on uniforms. Armies are composed of youth; for most of you it was
the first time you had tasted authority. It's gone to your heads; you
want to brush experience aside and dragoon the older world into new
formations. You, who were civilians yourselves, have come back despising
us civilians; your contempt is three-parts fear lest you'll fail, as you
failed before, in the old civilian competitive struggle. You talk about
the virtues war has taught; let's grant them and grant them
gratefully--they saved us from destruction. But what about the frantic
recklessness it encouraged, the cheap views of bodily chastity, the
desperate insistence on momentary happiness?" At the mention of bodily
chastity, Lady Beddow from the other end of the table had stuttered a
"tut, tut!" Her husband dodged it, as a boy might dodge a wheelbarrow
upset in his path. Without shifting his glance he ran on. "A complete
new set of social and spiritual values! Rubbish! War places an excessive
premium on merely brutal qualities--muscle, bone, sinew, all the
paraphernalia of physical endurance. What use has it got for old fellows
of intellectual attainments like myself? It takes the greatest poet,
singer, painter, violinist; all it can do with him is to thrust a rifle
into his hands. All brains look alike, Michael Angelo's or a
rag-picker's, when they're spattered in the mud of a trench. Take Lord
Taborley here, for instance--all that military stupidity could do with
him was to keep him in the ranks for two years. You can't make me
believe in your complete new set of social and spiritual values. A
complete unrest and insubordination to time-honored moralities is the
legacy of war."

Having delivered himself, he tucked his napkin tighter into his
waistcoat and attacked the fish-course, as though by this display of
gastronomic energy he could somehow strengthen his argument.

It was clear to Tabs that behind all that Sir Tobias had been saying lay
his misery over Maisie and Adair. He saw the world always in the
personal equation.

"I agree with most of your statements," the General blundered on. "And
yet you're wrong. You miss something. I think it's the vision of the