The Secret of the League by Ernest Bramah

With the account of the signing of the dissolution terms, and a brief reference to the sweeping victory of the League party -- already foreshadowed, indeed, to the point of the inevitable -- the unknown chronicler, whose version of the Social War this narrative has followed, brings his annals to a close. That war being finished, and by the repudiation of their Socialistic mentors on the part of a large section of the working classes, finished by more than a mere paper treaty, the worthy scribe announces with praiseworthy restraint that there is no more to be said.

"These men," he declares, in the quaint and archaic language of the past, -- and he might surely have added "these women" also -- "came not reluctantly, but in no wise ambitiously, out of the business of their own private lives to serve their country as they deemed; and that being accomplished to a successful end, would have returned, nothing loth, to more obscure affairs, having sought no personal gain beyond that which grew from public security, an equitable burden of citizenship, and a recovered pride among the nations. Albeit some must needs remain to carry on the work."