Employing the usual arguments, he put forward the usual airy nonsense: the present generation, he said, knew all about war and would not let itself be tricked so innocently into the next war as it had been into the last. At the very moment of mobilization the guns would be pointed in the wrong direction, for ex-soldiers like himself in particular had not forgotten what was in store for them. I was annoyed by the smug assurance with which, at a moment when in thousands and hundreds of thousands of factories explosives and poison gas were being manufactured, he dismissed the possibility of a war as lightly as he might flip the ash off his cigarette with a tap of his forefinger. One should not always let the wish be father to the thought, I protested with some firmness. The ministries and the military authorities who ran the whole war machine had likewise not been sleeping, and while we had been befuddling ourselves with Utopias, they had taken full advantage of the interval of peace in order to organize the masses in advance and have them ready to hand, at half-cock, so to speak. Even now, while Europe was at peace, the general attitude of servility had, thanks to modern methods of propaganda, increased to unbelievable proportions, and one ought boldly to face the fact that from the very moment when the news of mobilization came hurtling through the loudspeakers no opposition could be looked for from any quarter. The grain of dust that was man no longer counted today as a creature of volition.

Of course they were all against me, for, as is borne out by experience, the instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mine against cheap optimism was bound to prove particularly unwelcome at a moment when a sumptuously laid supper was awaiting us in the next room.

And now, to my surprise, the gallant hero of the day before entered the lists in my support — the very man in whom my false intuition had led me to suspect an opponent. Yes, it was sheer nonsense, he declared vehemently, to try nowadays to take into account the willingness or unwillingness of human material, for in the next war all the actual fighting would be done by machines, and men would be reduced to no more than a kind of component part of the machine. Even in the last war he had not met many men at the front who had either unequivocally acquiesced in or opposed the war. Most of them had been whirled into it like a cloud of dust and had simply found themselves caught up in the vast vortex, each one of them tossed about willy-nilly like a pea in a great sack. On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.

I listened in astonishment, my interest particularly aroused by the vehemence with which he now went on: ‘Don’t let us deceive ourselves. If in any country whatever a recruiting campaign were to be launched today for some utterly preposterous war, a war in Polynesia or in some corner of Africa, thousands and hundreds of thousands would rush to the colours without really knowing why, perhaps merely out of a desire to run away from themselves or from disagreeable circumstances. But as for any effective opposition to a war — I wouldn’t care to put it above zero. It always demands a far greater degree of courage for an individual to oppose an organized movement than to let himself be carried along with the stream — individual courage, that is, a variety of courage that is dying out in these times of progressive organization and mechanization. During the war practically the only courage I came across was mass courage, the courage that comes of being one of a herd, and anyone who examines this phenomenon more closely will find it to be compounded of some very strange elements: a great deal of vanity, a great deal of recklessness and even boredom, but, above all, a great deal of fear — yes, fear of staying behind, fear of being sneered at, fear of independent action, and fear, above all, of taking a stand against the mass enthusiasm of one’s fellows. It was not until later on in civil life that I personally realized that most of those reputed to be the bravest at the front were very questionable heroes — oh, please don’t misunderstand me!’ he said, turning politely to our host, who was pulling a wry face. ‘I do not by any means except myself.’

I liked the way in which he spoke, and I had an impulse to go up to him, but at that moment our hostess called us in to supper and, since we were placed far apart at table, we had no further opportunity of talking to each other. Not until the party broke up did we run into each other, in the cloakroom.

‘I believe,’ he said with a smile, ‘we have already been indirectly introduced by our common patron.’

I also smiled. ‘And, what is more, very thoroughly.’

‘I expect he made me out to be no end of an Achilles, and no doubt he was as proud as a peacock of my Order.’

‘That’s about it!’

‘Yes, he’s damned proud of it — just as he is of your books.’

‘A rum customer. But I’ve met worse. By the way — if you’ve no objection, I’ll walk along with you.’

We walked along together. Suddenly he turned to me.

‘Believe me, I’m not talking for effect when I say that for years nothing has been a greater bore to me than this Maria Theresa Order of mine — it’s far too conspicuous for my liking. I must admit, to be quite honest, that when it was awarded to me out there at the front I was, of course, absolutely bowled over. After all, I’d been brought up as a soldier, and as a cadet I’d heard this Order spoken of as something almost legendary, this one Order which comes the way of perhaps no more than a dozen men in every war — a positive bolt from the blue. Why, for a young chap of twenty-eight that sort of thing means a devil of a lot. All at once you find yourself standing before the whole brigade, everyone gazes up reverently as something suddenly sparkles out on your breast like a little sun, and His Majesty, the Emperor, that unapproachable deity, shakes you by the hand and congratulates you. But a distinction of that kind, you know, only had any sort of point in our military world; and when the war was over, it seemed to me ridiculous to have to go about for the rest of my life labelled as a hero, just because on one occasion I had acted with real courage for twenty minutes — probably no more courageously than thousands of others, except that I had had the good fortune to be noticed, and the perhaps still more astounding good fortune to come back alive. By the end of a year I was fed to the teeth with stalking about like a walking monument, seeing people wherever I went stare at the little metal disc and then let their gaze travel in awed admiration up to my face; in fact, my exasperation at being so eternally conspicuous was one of the reasons why, at the end of the war, I left the army and entered civilian life.’

He strode along more vigorously.

‘I say one of the reasons, but the chief reason was one that you may be able to appreciate even more. The chief reason was that I myself had become thoroughly sceptical as to my claim to be called a hero and of my heroism. After all, I knew better than all these strangers who gaped at me that the man behind the Order was anything but a hero, was even definitely the reverse — one of those who only rushed headlong into the war in order to extricate themselves from a desperate situation, men who were running away from their responsibilities rather than patriotic heroes.