They went from window to window, from land to land.  You had seen, had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, an imperious figure passing from place to place, looking on many scenes.  He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him ``Come.’’ He expostulated but obeyed; and so they went from window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia, till they came to the Prussian border and went on into Saxony; and always you would have heard, could you hear spirits speak, ``It might have been,’’ ``It might have been,’’ repeated from window to window.

They went down through Saxony, heading for Austria.  And for long the Kaiser kept that callous, imperious look.  But at last he, even he, at last he nearly wept.  And the phantom turned then and swept him back over Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries’ heads, back to his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep.

And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can never be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had seen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now, but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues over which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely breaking.

He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed all time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence.  The first night of the Kaiser’s punishment was accomplished.

The English Spirit

By the end of the South African war Sergeant Cane had got one thing very well fixed in his mind, and that was that war was an overrated amusement.  He said he ``was fed up with it,’’ partly because that misused metaphor was then new, partly because every one was saying it:  he felt it right down in his bones, and he had a long memory.  So when wonderful rumours came to the East Anglian village where he lived, on August 1, 1914, Sergeant Cane said:  ``That means war,’’ and decided then and there to have nothing to do with it:  it was somebody else’s turn; he felt he had done enough.  Then came August 4th, and England true to her destiny, and then Lord Kitchener’s appeal for men.  Sergeant Cane had a family to look after and a nice little house:  he had left the army ten years.

In the next week all the men went who had been in the army before, all that were young enough, and a good sprinkling of the young men too who had never been in the army.  Men asked Cane if he was going, and he said straight out ``No.’’

By the middle of August Cane was affecting the situation.  He was a little rallying point for men who did not want to go. ``He knows what it’s like,’’ they said.

In the smoking room of the Big House sat the Squire and his son, Arthur Smith; and Sir Munion Boomer-Platt, the Member for the division.  The Squire’s son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Cane had left the army since.  All the morning he had been cursing an imaginary general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk with Smith’s own letter before him, in full view but unopened.  Why on earth didn’t he answer it, Smith thought.  But he was calmer now, and the Squire and Sir Munion were talking of Sergeant Cane.