y habits, to throw on the scrap-heap its
sacred individualism, and do and live for the national cause, no one
doubts but we could win this war so as to avoid an inconclusive peace.
Some of us were talking to a middle-aged British merchant. We had left
our fellows in France cheerfully facing unaccustomed mud and frosts,
cheerfully accepting the chance of being blown into undiscoverable
atoms or living horribly maimed in mind or body, cheerfully accepting
all this with the set, deliberate purpose of fighting on for a
conclusive settlement--one which put out of question for the future the
rule of brute force, or tearing up of treaties, or renewal of the
present war. We had left those fellows fighting for an ideal they
perfectly well realised, and cheerful in the belief that they would
attain it.

The merchant was dressed in black morning coat and black tie, and looked
in every way a very respectable merchant. He was full of respectable
hopes. But when we spoke of a long war he drew a long face and talked
lugubriously of dislocated trade and strain upon capital--doubted how
long the industry could stand it, and shook his head.

Whenever one thinks of that worthy man one is overcome with a
great anger. What he meant was that if the war went on he might be
broken, and that was a calamity which he could not be expected to
face. We thought of all those fellows in France--British, Australians,
Canadians--cheerfully offering their lives for an ideal at which this
worthy citizen shied because it might cost him his fortune. Suppose it
did, suppose he had to leave his fine home and end his days in a villa,
suppose he had to start as a clerk in someone else's counting-house,
what was it beside what these boys were offering? I think of a fair head
which I had seen matted in red mud, of young nerves of steel shattered
beyond repair, of a wild night at Helles, when I found, stumbling beside
me in the first bitterness of realisation, a young officer who a few
yards back had been shot through both eyes. And here was this worthy man
shaking his head for fear that their ideals might interfere with his
business.

As to which, one can only say that, if the British nation, or the
Australian nation, because it shirks interference with its normal life,
because it is afraid of State enterprise, because of any personal or
individual consideration whatever, lets this struggle go by default, and
by inconclusive peace, to the people which is organ