They were done with all that long horror and terror; they were never to go back into it again; they were going back home; the New Day had dawned; war was no more, nor ever would be again.

Back to home, to waiting hearts, to shining eyes, to welcoming arms, to peace, they were going.
Thereafter, when some weeks of peace had passed and the drums of peace had fallen quiet and the rushing, crowding, hurrahing people had melted away, and the streets and roads were filled again with men and women bent on business, with engagements to keep, the returned men found themselves with dazed, listless mind waiting for orders from someone, somewhere, or for the next movie show to open.

But they were unwilling to take on the humdrum of making a living, and were in most cases incapable of initiating a congenial method of employing their powers, their new-found, splendid, glorious powers, by means of which they had saved an empire and a world.

They had become common men again, they in whose souls but a few weeks ago had flamed the glory and splendour of a divine heroism! Small wonder that some of these men, tingling with the consciousness of powers of which these busy, engaged people of the streets and shops knew nothing, turned with disdain from the petty, paltry, many of them non-manly tasks that men pursued solely that they might live.

Live! For these last terrible, great and glorious fifty months they had schooled themselves to the notion that the main business of life was not to live.
There had been for them a thing to do infinitely more worth while than to live.