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 countless incidental
heroes no doubt, but no star part. Even the Germans, with a national
predisposition for hero-cults and living still in an atmosphere of
Victorian humbug, can produce nothing better than that timber image,
Hindenburg.

It is not that the war has failed to produce heroes so much as that
it has produced heroism in a torrent. The great man of this war is the