"Once, asked for his opinion of bayonet practice being carried on near the cricket pavilion, he answered, with that lazy, slightly asthmatic intonation that had been so often and so extravagantly imitated: "It seems--to me--umph--a very vulgar way of killing people." The yarn was passed on and joyously appreciated--how Chips had told some big brass hat from the War Office that bayonet fighting was vulgar. Just like Chips. And they found an adjective for him--an adjective just beginning to be used: he was pre-War."