ded to
Joan in her gentle, high-bred voice. "I suppose you think that out of
date. I should have thought so myself forty years ago. We talk of
'giving' our sons and lovers, as if they were ours to give. It makes me
a little angry when I hear pampered women speak like that. It is the men
who have to suffer and die. It is for them to decide."

"But perhaps I can arrange a meeting for you with a friend," she added,
"who will be better able to help you, if he is in Paris. I will let you
know."

She told Joan what she remembered herself of 1870. She had turned her
country house into a hospital and had seen a good deal of the fighting.

"It would not do to tell the truth, or we should have our children
growing up to hate war," she concluded.

She was as good as her word, and sent Joan round a message the next
morning to come and see her in the afternoon. Joan was introduced to a
Monsieur de Chaumont. He was a soldierly-looking gentleman, with a grey
moustache, and a deep scar across his face.

"Hanged if I can see how we are going to get out of it," he answered Joan
cheerfully. "The moment there is any threat of war, it becomes a point
of honour with every nation to do nothing to avoid it. I remember my old
duelling days. The quarrel may have been about the silliest trifle
imaginable. A single word would have explained the whole thing away. But
to utter it would have stamped one as a coward. This Egyptian Tra-la-la!
It isn't worth the bones of a single grenadier, as our friends across the
Rhine would say. But I expect, before it's settled, there will be men's
bones sufficient, bleaching on the desert, to build another Pyramid. It's
so easily started: that's the devil of it. A mischievous boy can throw a
lighted match into a powder magazine, and then it becomes every patriot's
business to see that it isn't put out. I hate war. It accomplishes
nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before.
But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan
the conflagration. Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon.
Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war. Most of us do:
it's our opportunity. There's some excuse for us. But these
men--Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the
Menades of the Commune. They care nothing if the whole of Europe blazes.
They cannot personally get harmed whatever happens. It's fun to them."

"But t