Indeed, had they been determined at all costs to live, then they had become to themselves, to their comrades, and indeed to all the world, the most despicable of all living things, deserving and winning the infinite contempt of all true men.
While the "gratuity money" lasted life went merrily enough, but when the last cheque had been cashed, and the grim reality that rations had ceased and Q.M.Stores were not longer available thrust itself vividly into the face of the demobilised veteran, and when after experiencing in job hunting varying degrees of humiliation the same veteran made the startling and painful discovery that for his wares of heroic self-immolation, of dogged endurance done up in khaki, there was no demand in the bloodless but none the less strenuous conflict of living; and that other discovery, more disconcerting, that he was not the man he had been in pre-war days and thought himself still to be, but quite another, then he was ready for one of two alternatives, to surrender to the inevitable dictum that after all life was really not worth a fight, more particularly if it could be sustained without one, or, to fling his hat into the Bolshevist ring, ready for the old thing, war--war against the enemies of civilisation and his own enemies, against those who possessed things which he very much desired but which for some inexplicable cause he was prevented from obtaining.
The former class, to a greater or less degree, Jack Maitland represented; the latter, Tony Perrotte.

From their war experience they were now knit together in bonds that ran into life issues.

Together they had faced war's ultimate horror, together they had emerged with imperishable memories of sheer heroic manhood mutually revealed in hours of desperate need.
At Jack's request Tony had been given the position of a Junior Foreman in one of the planing mill departments, with the promise of advancement.
"You can have anything you are fit for, Tony, in any of the mills.

I feel that I owe you, that we both owe you more than we can pay by any position we can offer," was Grant Maitland's word.
"Mr.Maitland, neither you nor Jack owes me anything.

Jack has paid, and more than once, all he owed me.