ary roads; there has been scarcely a new road made in
Venetia since Napoleon drove his straight, poplar-bordered highways
through the land. M. Joseph Reinach, who was my companion upon the
French front, was equally impressed by the stirring up and exchange of
ideas in the villages due to the movement of the war. Charles Lamb's
story of the discovery of roast pork comes into one's head with an
effect of repartee. More than ideas are exchanged in the war zone,
and it is doubtful how far the sanitary precautions of the military
authorities avails against a considerable propaganda of disease. A more
serious argument for the good of war is that it evokes heroic qualities
that it has brought out almost incredible quantities of courage,
devotion, and individual romance that did not show in the suffocating
peace time that preceded the war. The reckless and beautiful zeal of
the women in the British and French munition factories, for example, the
gaiety and fearlessness of the common soldiers everywhere; these things
have always been there--like champagne sleeping in bottles in a cellar.
But was there any need to throw a bomb into the cellar?

I am reminded of a story, or rather of the idea for a story that I
think I must have read in that curious collection of fantasies and
observations, Hawthorne's _Note Book._ It was to be the story of a man
who found life dull and his circumstances altogether mediocre. He had
loved his wife, but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human
being. He had begun life with high hopes--and life was commonplace. He
was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some
action, some irrevocable action; but upon the nature of that action I do
not think the _Note Book_ was very clear. It was to carry him in such
a manner that he was to forget his wife. Then, when it was too late,
he was to see her at an upper window, stripped and firelit, a glorious
thing of light and loveliness and tragic intensity....

The elementary tales of the world are very few, and Hawthorne's story
and Lamb's story are, after all, only variations upon the same
theme. But can we poor human beings never realise our quality without
destruction?

3

One of the larger singularities of the great war is its failure to
produce great and imposing personalities, mighty leaders, Napoleons,
Caesars. I would indeed make that the essential thing in my reckoning
of the war. It is a drama without a hero; without c