Supremo by anyone who from the perspective of Italy may seem to be a
representative of British opinion. If Herbert Spencer had been
alive General Radcliffe would have certainly made him come,
travelling-hammock, ear clips and all--and I am not above confessing
that I wish that Herbert Spencer was alive--for this purpose. I found
Udine warm and gay with memories of Mr. Belloc, Lord Northcliffe, Mr.
Sidney Low, Colonel Repington and Dr. Conan Doyle, and anticipating the
arrival of Mr. Harold Cox. So we pass, mostly in automobiles that bump
tremendously over war roads, a cloud of witnesses each testifying after
his manner. Whatever else has happened, we have all been photographed
with invincible patience and resolution under the direction of Colonel
Barberich in a sunny little court in Udine.

My own manner of testifying must be to tell what I have seen and what
I have thought during this extraordinary experience. It has been my
natural disposition to see this war as something purposeful and epic,
as it is great, as an epoch, as "the War that will end War"--but of
that last, more anon. I do not think I am alone in this inclination to a
dramatic and logical interpretation. The caricatures in the French shops
show civilisation (and particularly Marianne) in conflict with a huge
and hugely wicked Hindenburg Ogre. Well, I come back from this tour with
something not so simple as that. If I were to be tied down to one word
for my impression of this war, I should say that this war is _Queer._ It
is not like anything in a really waking world, but like something in a
dream. It hasn't exactly that clearness of light against darkness or
of good against ill. But it has the quality of wholesome instinct
struggling under a nightmare. The world is not really awake. This vague
appeal for explanations to all sorts of people, this desire to exhibit
the business, to get something in the way of elucidation at present
missing, is extraordinarily suggestive of the efforts of the mind to