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if this or that officer's brain, this or that surgeon's hand, had acted more promptly. An impression of waste, confusion, ignorance, obstinacy, prejudice, and the indifference of selfishness or of mortal fatigue, emanated from these narratives written home from the front, or faltered out by white lips on hospital pillows.

"The Friends of French Art," especially since they had enlarged their range, had to do with young men accustomed to the freest exercise of thought and criticism. A nation in arms does not judge a war as simply as an army of professional soldiers. All these young intelligences were so many subtly-adjusted instruments for the testing of the machinery of which they formed a part; and not one accepted the results passively. Yet in one respect all were agreed: the "had to be" of the first day was still on every lip. The German menace must be met: chance willed that theirs should be the generation to meet it; on that point speculation was vain and discussion useless. The question that stirred them all was how the country they were defending was helping them to carry on the struggle. There the evidence was cruelly clear, the comment often scathingly explicit; and Campton, bending still lower over the abyss, caught a shuddering glimpse of what might be—must be—if political blunders, inertia, tolerance, perhaps even evil ambitions and connivances, should at last outweigh the effort of the front. There was no logical argument against such a possibility. All civiliza-