only solidified that grisly conviction. We seem to have been born just
in time to see the end of the spiritual world, the final disintegration
of the grand passions of the human soul. Oh, we keep up a certain
pretence from force of habit, but we are being forced to realize that
the philosophers were on the right track when they foretold the
subjugation of man by the instruments of civilization. Or you can say
that the _tempo_ of our modern life is too fast to permit our accepted
notions of the elemental comedy and tragedy of existence to register
with any permanence. The newspaper scribbler talks incessantly of
Armageddon, heroism, patriotism, sacrifice, and so on, and we wait in
vain for our hearts to respond to their invocations. We discover with
surprise that we are as incapable of profound sorrow as of a high
resolve. We are swept on out of sight. We forget, or we die and are
forgotten. We are beginning to wonder now and again whether all our
boasted science and mechanical discoveries are not evil after all,
whether the old monks were such bigoted fools as we have been taught to
believe when they denounced knowledge as a danger to the soul. But we
have very little time in which to reflect. We rush on to fresh
improvements, and we find ourselves less admirable than before.

"And so, as we went down that cold, remorseless street of shuttered
houses, away from the chamber of death, we were silent, but we thought
not at all of death. Perhaps we did at the turning into the _Via
Egnatia_, for the dead soldier was still lying where he had fallen in
the shallow channel that ran just there by an orchard wall. He was lying
on his face, with his hands close to his head, and his pose gave one a
peculiar impression that he was looking with intense curiosity into some
subterranean chamber. His attitude was not at all suggestive of death.
It was quite easy, looking across at him, to imagine him suddenly
leaping to his feet, beckoning us to come and have a peep through his
newly found hole. The soldiers we encountered hurriedly descending the
street from the Citadel and running across to vanish into the White
Tower were much more like dead men, strange to say. Their faces were
pallid with lack of sleep, and they bore the hard-lipped stare of
disciplined men who have suddenly lost faith in their commanders. They
paid no more attention to us than to the stones of the roadway. They ran
past us laden with bread and vegetables, hastily