Disenchantment

fair in a game. Every fencer or boxer may feint. A Rugby football player "gives the dummy" without any shame. In cricket a bowler is justly valued the more for masking his action.

there is to be known about our Great War of 1914-18. And he was not censored. So he put into his _Henry IV_ and _Henry V_ a lot of little things that our press had to leave out...

Lately I came across such a book. It is surely one of the crossest books ever written. Its author fought in France, in the ranks, for a good many months of the war. He must have...

Satanism is one of the words that most of us simple people have heard others use; we guiltily feel that we ought to know what it means, but do not quite like to ask, lest we exp...

What could the New Army not have done if all the time of its training had been fully used! A few, at least, of its units had a physique above that of the Guards; many did more a...

"Of late years," the novel of _Shirley_ begins, "an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England; they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or mo...

autumn, or late middle-age, of its own. "Your young men," we are told, "shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." The same with whole armies. But middle-aged armi...

"Doth any man doubt," the wise Bacon asks, "that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the lik...

In either of two opposite tempers you may carry on war. In one of the two you will want to rate your enemy, all round, as high as you can. You may pursue him down a trench, or h...

Now that most of our men in the prime of life have been in the army we seem to be in for a goodly literature of disappointment. All the ungifted young people came back from the...

For the moment, no doubt, war has gone out of fashion; it pines in the shade, like the old horsehair covers for sofas, or antimacassars of lace. Hardly a day can pass, even now,...

How shall it all be set right? For it must be, of course. A people that did not wait to be pushed off its seat by the Kaiser is not likely now to turn its face to the wall and d...

There is no one day of which you can say: "My youth ended then. On the Monday the ball of my vision had eagles that flew unabashed to the sun. On the Tuesday it hadn't." The sea...

Men wearying in trenches used to tell one another sometimes what they fancied the end of the war would be like. Each had his particular favourite vision. Some morning the Captai...

If you cannot hit or kick during a fight, at any rate you can spit. But, to be happy in this arm of the service, you have to feel sure that the adversary is signally fit to be s...

When a man enlisted during the war he found himself living the life of the common man in a Communist State. Once inside he had no more choices to make than a Russian under the S...