He was one of those who had acknowledged from the first that Germany had set forth, with the sword in her hand, on a war of conquest.

His own inherited martial spirit had vaguely approved; he, too, in those earlier days, had felt the sunlight upon his rapier.

Later had come the enlightenment, the turbulent waves of doubt, the nightmare of a nation's awakening conscience, mirrored in his own soul.

It was in a depression shared, perhaps, in a lesser degree by millions of those whose ranks he had joined, that he felt this passionate craving for escape into a world which took count of other things..