eal of evidence before I
believe that it does more than prove to people that they are braver than
they know. I can't believe vaguely in death and sorrow and disablement and
waste being good things. It is merely a question of what you are paying so
ghastly a price for. In the Napoleonic wars the price was paid for the
liberties of Europe, to show a great nation that it must abandon the ideal
of domination. That is a great cause; but it is great because men are evil,
and not because they are good. War seems to me the temporary triumph of the
old bad past over the finer and more beautiful future. Do not let us be
taken in by the romance of it. That is the childish view, that loves the
sight and sound of the marching column and the stirring music. People find
it hard to believe that anything so strong and gallant and cheerful
_can_ have a sinister side. And no doubt for a young, strong, and bold
man the excitement of it is an intense pleasure. But what we have to ask is
whether we are right in taking so heavy a toll from the world for all that:
I do not think it right, though it may be inevitable. But then I belong to
the future, and I think I should be more at home in the world a thousand
years hence than I am to-day."

"But I go back to my point," said Lestrange: "does not a great war like
that send people to their knees in faith?"

"Depend upon it," said Father Payne, "that anything which makes people
acquiesce in preventable evil, and see the beautiful effects of death and
pain and waste, is the direct influence of the devil. It is the last and
most guileful subtlety that he practises, to make us solemnly mournful and
patient in the presence of calamities for which we have ourselves to thank.
The only prayer worth praying in the time of war is not, 'Help us to bear
this,' but 'Help us to cure this'; and to behave with meek reverence is to
behave like the old servant in _The Master of Ballantrae_, who bore
himself like an afflicted saint under an illness, the root of which was
drunkenness. The worst religion is that which keeps its sense of repentance
alive by its own misdeeds!"

He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "No, we mustn't make terms
with war, any more than we must do with cholera. It's a great,
heartbreaking evil, and it puts everything back a stage. Of course it
brings out fine qualities--I know that--and so does a plague of cholera.
It's the evil in both that brings out the fine things to oppose it.