ing about war. Very possibly the
prophecies of shortage and restrictions and starvation were, in the
proof, to be refuted as a thousand other prophecies of the early days,
optimistic and pessimistic, were being refuted. What had that to do with
it? Remained the frightful facts that were going on out there in Belgium
and in Gallipoli and in Russia. Remained the increasing revelation of
Germany's enormous might in war and the revelation of what war was as
she conducted it. Remained the sinister revelation that we were not
winning as in the past we had "always won." Remained his envisagement of
England--England!--standing four-square to her enemies, but standing as
some huge and splendid animal something bewildered by the fury of the
onset upon it. Shaking her head whereon had fallen stunning and
unexpected blows, as it might be a lion enormously smashed across the
face; roaring her defiance; baring her fangs; tearing up the ground
before her; dreadful and undaunted and tremendous; but stricken; in sore
agony; in heavy amazement; her pride thrust through with swords; her
glory answered by another's glory; her dominion challenged; shaken,
bleeding.

England.... This frightful war!

II

Remained also, blowing about the streets, in the newspapers and at
meetings, in the mouths of many, and in the eyes of most, the new
popular question, "Why aren't you in khaki?" The subject of age, always
shrouded in a seemly and decorous modesty in England, and especially
since, a few years previously, an eminent professor of medicine had
unloosed the alarming theory of "Too old at forty", was suddenly ripped
out of its prudish coverings. One generation of men began to talk with
thoroughly engaging frankness and largeness about their age. They would
even announce it in a loud voice in crowded public conveyances. It was
nothing, in those days, to hear a man suddenly declare in an omnibus or
tramway car, "Well, I'm thirty-eight and I only wish to heaven I was a
few years younger." Other men would heartfully chime in, "Ah, same thing
with me. It's hard." And all these men, thus cruelly burdened with a few
more years than the age limit, would look with great intensity at other
men, apparently not thus burdened, who for their part would assume
attitudes of physical unfitness or gaze very sternly out of the window.

Several of the younger employees of Fortune, East and Sabre's joined up
(as the current phrase had it) in the first weeks of th