e.

Two minutes more and the party of six had settled into deep chairs, into
a mammoth davenport, before a blazing fire of spruce and birch. Cigars,
liqueurs, coffee, the things men love after dinner, were there; one had
the vaguest impression of two vanishing Japanese persons who might or
might not have brought trays and touched the fire and placed tiny tables
at each right hand; an atmosphere of completeness was present, one did
not notice how. One settled with a sigh of satisfaction into comfort,
and chose a cigar. One laughed to hear the Judge pound away at the
Senator.

"It's all a game." Dr. Rutherford turned to the Russian. "They're
devoted old friends, not violent enemies, General. The Senator stirs up
the Judge by taking impossible positions and defending them savagely.
The Judge invariably falls into the trap. Then a battle. Their battles
are the joy of the Century Club. The Senator doesn't believe for an
instant that the war held back democracy."

At that the Senator whirled. "I don't? But I do.--Don't _smoke_ that
cigar, Rutherford, on your life. Peter will have these atrocities.
Here--Kaki, bring the doctor the other box.--That's better.--I don't
believe what I said? Now listen. How could the fact that the world was
turned into a military camp, officers commanding, privates obeying,
rank, rank, rank everywhere throughout mankind, how could that fail to
hinder democracy, which is in its essence the leveling of ranks? Tell me
that!"

The doctor grinned at the Russian. "What about it, General? What do you
think?"

The General answered slowly, with a small accent but in the wonderfully
good English of an educated Russian. "I do not agree with the
Sena-torr," he stated, and five heads turned to listen. There was a
quality of large personality in the burr of the voice, in the poise and
soldierly bearing, in the very silence of the man, which made his slow
words of importance. "I believe indeed that the Sena-torr is
partly--shall I say speaking for argument?"

The Senator laughed.

"The great war, in which all of us here had the honor to bear arms--that
death grapple of tyranny against freedom--it did not hold back the cause
of humanity, of democracy, that war. Else thousands upon thousands of
good lives were given in vain."

There was a hushed moment. Each of the men, men now from fifty to sixty
years old, had been a young soldier in that Homeric struggle. Each was
caught back at the words of the Russi