ugh and faith enough."

He indicated the atlas beside him.

"Here I am planning the real map of the world," he said. "Every sort of
district that has a character of its own must have its own rule; and the
great republic of the united states of the world must keep the federal
peace between them all. That's the plain sense of life; the federal
world-republic. Why do we bother ourselves with loyalties to any other
government but that? It needs only that sufficient men should say it,
and that republic would be here now. Why have we loitered so long--until
these tragic punishments come? We have to map the world out into its
states, and plan its government and the way of its tolerations."

"And you think it will come?"

"It will come."

"And you believe that men will listen to such schemes?" said Letty.

Mr. Britling, with his eyes far away over the hills, seemed to think.
"Yes," he said. "Not perhaps to-day--not steadily. But kings and empires
die; great ideas, once they are born, can never die again. In the end
this world-republic, this sane government of the world, is as certain as
the sunset. Only...."

He sighed, and turned over a page of his atlas blindly.

"Only we want it soon. The world is weary of this bloodshed, weary of
all this weeping, of this wasting of substance and this killing of sons
and lovers. We want it soon, and to have it soon we must work to bring
it about. We must give our lives. What is left of our lives....

"That is what you and I must do, Letty. What else is there left for us
to do?... I will write of nothing else, I will think of nothing else now
but of safety and order. So that all these dear dead--not one of them
but will have brought the great days of peace and man's real beginning
nearer, and these cruel things that make men whimper like children, that
break down bright lives into despair and kill youth at the very moment
when it puts out its clean hands to take hold of life--these cruelties,
these abominations of confusion, shall cease from the earth forever."

Section 10

Letty regarded him, frowning, and with her chin between her fists....

"But do you really believe," said Letty, "that things can be better than
they are?"

"But--_Yes!_" said Mr. Britling.

"I don't," said Letty. "The world is cruel. It is just cruel. So it will
always be."

"It need not be cruel," said Mr. Britling.

"It is just a place of cruel things. It is all set with knives. It is
full of disea