It transcended judgment. It defied conclusions and rendered equally
impossible both hope and despair. His pride in his country was
intensified as months passed; his faith in his country was not
lessened. And yet, wherein was the efficacy of grim words about
British tenacity? The great new Somme offensive was not succeeding in
the North. Was victory possible? Was victory deserved? In his daily
labour he was brought into contact with too many instances of official
selfishness, folly, ignorance, stupidity, and sloth, French as well as
British, not to marvel at times that the conflict had not come to an
ignominious end long ago through simple lack of imagination. He knew
that he himself had often failed in devotion, in rectitude, in sheer
grit.
The supreme lesson of the war was its revelation of what human nature
actually was. And the solace of the lesson, the hope for triumph,
lay in the fact that human nature must be substantially the same
throughout the world. If we were humanly imperfect, so at least was
the enemy.
Perhaps the frame of society was about to collapse. Perhaps Queen,
deliberately courting destruction, and being destroyed, was the symbol
of society. What matter? Perhaps civilisation, by its nobility and its
elements of reason, and by the favour of destiny, would be saved from
disaster after frightful danger, and Concepcion was its symbol.
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