ow the
logic of its path. Whither?... Only kingship will ever master that beast
of steel which has got loose into the world. Nothing but the sense of
unconquerable kingship in us all will ever dare withstand it.... Men
must be kingly aristocrats--it isn't MAY be now, it is MUST be--or,
these confederated metals, these things of chemistry and metallurgy,
these explosives and mechanisms, will trample the blood and life out of
our race into mere red-streaked froth and filth...."

Then he turned to the question of this metallic beast's release. Would
it ever be given blood?

"Men of my generation have been brought up in this threat of a great war
that never comes; for forty years we have had it, so that it is with
a note of incredulity that one tells oneself, 'After all this war may
happen. But can it happen?'"

He proceeded to speculate upon the probability whether a great war would
ever devastate western Europe again, and it was very evident to White
that he wanted very much to persuade himself against that idea. It was
too disagreeable for him to think it probable. The paper was dated 1910.
It was in October, 1914, that White, who was still working upon the
laborious uncertain account of Benham's life and thought he has recently
published, read what Benham had written. Benham concluded that the
common-sense of the world would hold up this danger until reason could
get "to the head of things."

"There are already mighty forces in Germany," Benham wrote, "that will
struggle very powerfully to avoid a war. And these forces increase.
Behind the coarseness and the threatenings, the melodrama and the
display of the vulgarer sort there arises a great and noble people.... I
have talked with Germans of the better kind.... You cannot have a whole
nation of Christophes.... There also the true knighthood discovers
itself.... I do not believe this war will overtake us."

"WELL!" said White.

"I must go back to Germany and understand Germany better," the notes
went on.

But other things were to hold Benham back from that resolve. Other
things were to hold many men back from similar resolves until it was too
late for them....

"It is preposterous that these monstrous dangers should lower over
Europe, because a certain threatening vanity has crept into the blood of
a people, because a few crude ideas go inadequately controlled.... Does
no one see what that metallic beast will do if they once let it loose?
It will trample citi