Unfortunately they can be built again. Like Doubting Castle, they
have been demolished many times by successive Greathearts, and
rebuilt by Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, by Feeble Mind and
Much Afraid, and by all the jurymen of Vanity Fair. Another
generation of "secondary education" at our ancient public schools
and the cheaper institutions that ape them will be quite
sufficient to keep the two going until the next war. For the
instruction of that generation I leave these pages as a record of
what civilian life was during the war: a matter on which history
is usually silent. Fortunately it was a very short war. It is
true that the people who thought it could not last more than six
months were very signally refuted by the event. As Sir Douglas
Haig has pointed out, its Waterloos lasted months instead of
hours. But there would have been nothing surprising in its
lasting thirty years. If it had not been for the fact that the
blockade achieved the amazing feat of starving out Europe, which
it could not possibly have done had Europe been properly
organized for war, or even for peace, the war would have lasted
until the belligerents were so tired of it that they could no
longer be compelled to compel themselves to go on with it.
Considering its magnitude, the war of 1914-18 will certainly be
classed as the shortest in history. The end came so suddenly that
the combatant literally stumbled over it; and yet it came a full
year later than it should have come if the belligerents had not
been far too afraid of one another to face the situation
sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she
began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously
exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too
close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at
which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it