d to a man of
temperament. Therefore, I'm a pacifist. And I had rather live under
Prussian domination than rush about the country with a gun and sixty
pounds of luggage on my back!"

He looked heavily at Dulcie, who had slipped out of the corner on the
terrace, where he and Esme had penned her.

"There are other things to do more interesting than jabbing bayonets
into Germans," he remarked. "Did you say you hadn't any dance to spare
us, Miss Soane? Nor you either, Miss Dunois? Oh, well." He cast a
disgusted glance at Barres, squinted at Westmore through his greasy
monocle in hostile silence; then, taking Esme's arm, made them all a
too profound obeisance and sauntered away along the terrace.

"What a pair of beasts!" said Westmore. "They make me actually ill!"

Barres shrugged and turned to the very engaging lady beside him:

"What do you think of that breed of human, doctor?" he inquired.

She smiled at Barres and said:

"Several of my own patients who are suffering from the same form of
psycho-neurotic trouble are also peace-at-any-price pacifists. They do
not come to me to be cured of their pacifism. On the contrary, they
cherish it most tenderly. In examining them for other troubles I
happened upon what appeared to me a very close relation between the
peculiar attitude of the peace-at-any-price pacifist and a certain
type of unconscious pervert."

"That passivism is perversion does not surprise me," remarked Barres.

"Well," she said, "the pacifist is not conscious of his real
desires and therefore cannot be termed a true pervert. But the
very term, passivism, is usually significant and goes very deep
psychologically. In analysing my patients I struck against a buried
impulse in them to suffer tyrannous treatment from an omnipotent
master. The impulse was so strong that it amounted to a craving and
tried to absorb all the psychic material within its reach. They did
not recognise the original impulse, because that had long ago been
crushed down by the exactions of civilised life. Nevertheless,
they were tortured and teased, made unsettled and wretched by a
something which continually baffled them. Deep under the upper crust
of their personalities was concealed a seething desire to be
completely, inevitably, relentlessly, unreservedly overwhelmed by a
subjugation from which there was no escape."

She turned to Westmore:

"It's purely pathological, the condition of those two self-confessed
pacifists. The