th a modest
confusion that greatly enhanced the king's opinion of his admirable
simplicity. He pointed out that eager as he was to snatch at the
proffered distinction, it might at the present stage appear invidious,
and he therefore suggested that the conferring of it should be postponed
until it could be made the crown and conclusion of his services. The
king was unable to shake this resolution, and the two men parted with
expressions of mutual esteem.

The king then summoned Firmin in order to make a short note of a number
of things that he had said during the day. But after about twenty
minutes' work the sweet sleepiness of the mountain air overcame him, and
he dismissed Firmin and went to bed and fell asleep at once, and slept
with extreme satisfaction. He had had an active, agreeable day.

Section 5

The establishment of the new order that was thus so humanly begun,
was, if one measures it by the standard of any preceding age, a rapid
progress. The fighting spirit of the world was exhausted. Only here
or there did fierceness linger. For long decades the combative side
in human affairs had been monstrously exaggerated by the accidents of
political separation. This now became luminously plain. An enormous
proportion of the force that sustained armaments had been nothing more
aggressive than the fear of war and warlike neighbours. It is doubtful
if any large section of the men actually enlisted for fighting ever at
any time really hungered and thirsted for bloodshed and danger. That
kind of appetite was probably never very strong in the species after the
savage stage was past. The army was a profession, in which killing had
become a disagreeable possibility rather than an eventful certainty. If
one reads the old newspapers and periodicals of that time, which did
so much to keep militarism alive, one finds very little about glory and
adventure and a constant harping on the disagreeableness of invasion
and subjugation. In one word, militarism was funk. The belligerent
resolution of the armed Europe of the twentieth century was the
resolution of a fiercely frightened sheep to plunge. And now that its
weapons were exploding in its hands, Europe was only too eager to drop
them, and abandon this fancied refuge of violence.

For a time the whole world had been shocked into frankness; nearly all
the clever people who had hitherto sustained the ancient belligerent
separations had now been brought to realise the need for si