SOURCE: D'Elia, Gaetano. “Let Us Make Tales, Not Love: Conrad's ‘The Tale.’” The Conradian 12, no. 1 (1987): 50-8.

In the following essay, D'Elia explores the relationship between love and war in “The Tale.”

After Napoleon, a century later, England was threatened by another Great War. However, the two Great Wars, as Conrad defines them in “The Dover Patrol” (1921) were very different in their spiritual and moral consequences. Napoleon's threat “ran its course, as momentous, if less ruthless, than the deadly struggle in which the Dover Patrol has played its part. When it ended it left the world as weary, indeed, as it is today, but much less unsettled in its thoughts and emotions about the spiritual value of its monstrous experience. Men's ideas were simpler then, their sentiments less complex”.¹

This is the reason why General D'Hubert does not draw any distinctions between the pleasure which can be got out...