pushing some of us out of our places, still push; you will find it needs some shoving.  But the things courage can do!  The things that even incompetence can do if it works with singleness of purpose.  The war has done at least one big thing:  it has taken spring out of the year.  And, this accomplished, our leading people are amazed to find that the other seasons are not conducting themselves as usual.  The spring of the year lies buried in the fields of France and elsewhere.  By the time the next eruption comes it may be you who are responsible for it and your sons who are in the lava.  All, perhaps, because this year you let things slide.

We are a nice and kindly people, but it is already evident that we are stealing back into the old grooves, seeking cushions for our old bones, rather than attempting to build up a fairer future.  That is what we mean when we say that the country is settling down.  Make haste, or you will become like us, with only the thing we proudly call experience to add to your stock, a poor exchange for the generous feelings that time will take away.  We have no intention of giving you your share.  Look around and see how much share Youth has now that the war is over.  You got a handsome share while it lasted.

I expect we shall beat you; unless your fortitude be doubly girded by a desire to send a message of cheer to your brothers who fell, the only message, I believe, for which they crave; they are not worrying about their Aunt Jane.  They want to know if you have learned wisely from what befell them; if you have, they will be braced in the feeling that they did not die in vain.  Some of them think they did.  They will not take our word for it that they did not.  You are their living image; they know you could not lie to them, but they distrust our flattery and our cunning faces.  To us they have passed away; but are you who stepped into their heritage only yesterday, whose books are scarcely cold to their hands, you who still hear their cries being blown across the links—­are you already relegating them to the shades?  The gaps they have left in this University are among the most honourable of her wounds.  But we are not here to acclaim them.  Where they are now, hero is, I think, a very little word.  They call to you to find out in time the truth about this great game, which your elders play for stakes and Youth plays for its life.

I do not know whether you are grown a little tired of that word hero, but I am sure the heroes are.  That is the subject of one of our unfinished plays; M’Connachie is the one who writes the plays.  If any one of you here proposes to be a playwright you can take this for your own and finish it.  The scene is a school, schoolmasters present, but if you like you could make it a university, professors present.  They are discussing an illuminated scroll about a student fallen in the war, which they have kindly presented to his parents; and unexpectedly