anaemia that is more rotting than even an unjust war. The end will
indeed have come to our courage and to us when we are afraid in dire
mischance to refer the final appeal to the arbitrament of arms.
I suppose all the lusty of our race, alive and dead, join hands on
that.

'And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.'

But if you must be in the struggle, the more reason you should know
why, before it begins, and have a say in the decision whether it is
to begin. The youth who went to the war had no such knowledge, no
such say; I am sure the survivors, of whom there must be a number
here to-day, want you to be wiser than they were, and are certainly
determined to be wiser next time themselves. If you are to get that
partnership, which, once gained, is to be for mutual benefit, it will
be, I should say, by banding yourselves with these men, not defiantly
but firmly, not for selfish ends but for your country's good. In the
meantime they have one bulwark; they have a General who is befriending
them as I think never, after the fighting was over, has a General
befriended his men before. Perhaps the seemly thing would be for us,
their betters, to elect one of these young survivors of the carnage
to be our Rector. He ought now to know a few things about war that
are worth our hearing. If his theme were the Rector's favourite,
diligence. I should be afraid of his advising a great many of us
to be diligent in sitting still and doing no more harm.

Of course he would put it more suavely than that, though it is not,
I think, by gentleness that you will get your rights; we are dogged
ones at sticking to what we have got, and so will you be at our age.