``No, sir?’’ said Cane. ``It’s hard.  You get used to it.  But it will always be hard.’’

``Yes, it will always be hard,’’ said Smith. ``Do you remember the time we were thirsty?’’

``Oh, yes, sir,’’ said Cane, ``I remember that.  One doesn’t forget that.’’

``No.  I still dream of it sometimes,’’ said Smith. ``It makes a nasty dream.  I wake with my mouth all dry too, when I dream that.’’

``Yes,’’ said Cane, ``one doesn’t forget being thirsty.’’

``Well,’’ said Smith, ``I suppose we’re for it all over again?’’

``I suppose so, sir,’’ said Cane.

An Investigation Into the Causes and Origin of the War

The German imperial barber has been called up.  He must have been called up quite early in the war.  I have seen photographs in papers that leave no doubt of that.  Who he is I do not know:  I once read his name in an article but have forgotten it; few even know if he still lives.  And yet what harm he has done!  What vast evils he has unwittingly originated!  Many years ago he invented a frivolity, a jeu d’esprit easily forgivable to an artist in the heyday of his youth, to whom his art was new and even perhaps wonderful.  A craft, of course, rather than an art, and a humble craft at that; but then, the man was young, and what will not seem wonderful to youth?

He must have taken the craft very seriously, but as youth takes things seriously, fantastically and with laughter.  He must have determined to outshine rivals:  he must have gone away and thought, burning candles late perhaps, when all the palace was still.  But how can youth think seriously?  And there had come to him this absurd, this fantastical conceit.  What else would have come?  The more seriously he took the tonsorial art, the more he studied its tricks and phrases and heard old barbers lecture, the more sure were the imps of youth to prompt him to laughter and urge him to something outrageous and ridiculous.  The background of the dull pomp of Potsdam must have made all this more certain.  It was bound to come.

And so one day, or, as I have suggested, suddenly late one night, there came to the young artist bending over tonsorial books that quaint, mad, odd, preposterous inspiration.  Ah, what pleasure there is in the madness of youth; it is not like the madness of age, clinging to outworn formulæ; it is the madness of breaking away, of galloping among precipices, of dallying with the impossible, of courting the absurd.  And this inspiration, it was in none of the books; the lecturer barbers had not lectured on it, could not dream of it and did not dare to; there was no tradition for it, no precedent; it was mad; and to introduce it into the pomp of Potsdam, that was the daring of madness.  And this preposterous inspiration of the absurd young barber-madman was nothing less than a moustache that without any curve at all, or any suggestion of sanity, should go suddenly up at the ends very nearly as high as the eyes!