"That's just it, Travers major. Thanks to our sane policy of respecting
the rights of all men, and never setting ourselves up as the only nation
that counts, we do count--first and foremost; but if we'd gone out into
the whole earth and bawled that we were going to make it Anglo-Saxon,
then we should have been laughed at, as the Germans are now; and we
should dismally have failed as colonists, just as they have."
So, of course, I saw all he meant by his psychical idea, and no doubt it
was a jolly fine thought; and most, though not all, of the Sixth saw it
also. But the Fifth saw it less, and the Fourth didn't see it at all.
The Fourth were, in fact, rather an earthy lot about this time, and they
seemed to have a foggy sort of notion that might is right; or, if it
isn't, it generally comes out right, which to the minds of the Fourth
amounted to the same thing.
The war naturally had a large effect upon us, and according as we looked
at the war, so you could judge of our opinions in general. I and my
brother, Travers minor, and Briggs and Saunders--though Briggs and
Travers minor were themselves in the Lower Fourth--were interested in
the strategy and higher command. We foretold what was going to happen
next, and were sometimes quite right; whereas chaps like Abbott and
Blades and Mitchell and Pegram and Rice were only interested in the
brutal part, and the bloodshed and the grim particulars about the
enemy's trenches after a sortie, and so on.
In time, curiously enough, there got to be two war parties in the
school. Of course they both wanted England to win, but we took a higher
line about it, and looked on to the end, and argued about the division
of the spoil, and the general improvement of Europe, and the new map,
and the advancement of better ideas, and so on; while Rice and Pegram
and such-like took the "horrible slaughter" line, and rejoiced to hear
of parties surrounded, and Uhlans who had been eating hay for a week
before they were captured, and the decks of battleships just before they
sank, and such-like necessary but very unfortunate things.