pleasure. There is
something so large and simple about the operation of painting a whole
stone General a bright red. Of course I can understand that the people
of Payerne were indignant. They had passed to their homes at twilight
through the streets of that beautiful city (or is it a province?), and
they had seen against the silver ending of the sunset the grand grey
figure of the hero of that land remaining to guard the town under the
stars. It certainly must have been a shock to come out in the broad
white morning and find a large vermilion General staring under the
staring sun. I do not blame them at all for clamouring for the
schoolboy's detention in prison; I dare say a little detention in prison
would do him no harm. Still, I think the immense act has something about
it human and excusable; and when I endeavour to analyse the reason of
this feeling I find it to lie, not in the fact that the thing was big or
bold or successful, but in the fact that the thing was perfectly
useless to everybody, including the person who did it. The raid ends in
itself; and so Master Allen is sucked back again, having accomplished
nothing but an epic.

There is one thing which, in the presence of average modern journalism,
is perhaps worth saying in connection with such an idle matter as this.
The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything
else; they are concerned with mutual contract, or with the rights of
independent human lives. But the whole modern world, or at any rate the
whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain
morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral
grounds. If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of
Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say
everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is
wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency
of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell
whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother.
Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they
will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of
manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will
talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is,
they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This
again depends on the circumsta