the fanatical
fury of a Trotsky."

"Yes," said the doctor, "the danger of these prolonged wars is that
they end by making the most unusual habits generally acceptable. They
require courage; and courage is a dangerous virtue, the mother of
revolutions. And it is not easy to accustom a nation of warriors to
render due obedience once more to second-rate politicians and
profiteers. The oligarchy of _parvenus_ which arose after the Punic
wars could not be respected as the Roman senate had been. They
possessed neither its hardihood nor its heroic parsimony. Bent only
on beautiful slaves, perfumes and luxuries, they sacrificed their
nascent influence to their passion for pleasure. They did not last
long."

"It is quite certain," the colonel continued, "that in order to
survive, an aristocracy must be hard upon itself. Moral discipline is
indispensable to any class that wants to govern. If the industrial
middle class is to take our place, it will have to be austere and
hard. What sealed once and for all the doom of the Roman Senators was
the decadent Greek culture of their sons. Those young noblemen
affected an elegant dilettantism and toyed pleasantly with cultured
demagogy. Caesar in his youth, Aurelle, was rather like one of your
comfortable cultured French middle-class Socialists. His lifelong
dream was to lead a moderate reform party, but he was embittered by
the attacks of the Roman patricians. He is a type against whom our
Public Schools protect us pretty well. We also have our decadent
young lords, but the contempt of their own generation keeps them from
doing much harm."

He stopped in order to salute a magpie--for he was very
superstitious--pointed with his cane to a tank that lay buried on its
back in the sand like a defeated tortoise, and went on:

"Do you think you will have a revolution in France after the war? If
you do, I shall be very much surprised. Up till now the remembrance
of 1793 has kept us looking with apprehension towards France as the
danger-spot of Europe. To-day we realize our mistake.

"1793 made your country more conservative than any other, by giving
your peasants the possession of the soil. It will probably be seen
some years hence that the Russian Revolution has also had the same
effect. The revolution will end when the Red armies return to Moscow
and some unemployed Bonapartsky has the Soviets dispersed by his
grenadiers. Then the _moujiks_ who have acquired the national
property will