Yet others, he admitted, as well as his mother, held the war responsible for Gideon Vetch--as if the great struggle had cast him out in some gigantic cataclysm, as if it had broken through the once solid ground of established order, and had released into the world all the explosive gases of disintegration, of destruction.
For himself, the young man reflected now, he had always thought otherwise.

It was a period, he felt, of humbug radicalism, of windbag eloquence; yet he possessed both wit and discernment enough to see that, though ideas might explode in empty talk, still it took ideas to make the sort of explosion that was deafening one's ears.

All the flat formula of the centuries could not produce a single Gideon Vetch.

Such men were part of the changing world; they answered not to reasoned argument, but to the loud crash of breaking idols.

Stephen hated Vetch with all his heart, but he acknowledged him.