ently, according to reason and
morality. The spirit of tradition infects humanity, and its two
frightful manifestations are--"

The old man rose from his chair, as if about to protest and as if to
say, "Don't mention them!"

But the young man could not restrain himself any more.

"--inheritance from the past and the fatherland."

"Hush!" cried the old man. "You are treading on ground on which I
cannot follow. I recognise present evils. I pray with all my heart
for the new era. More than that, I believe in it. But do not speak
that way about two sacred principles."

"You speak like everybody else," said the young man bitterly. "We must
go to the root of the evil, you know we must. /You/ certainly do."
And he added violently, "Why do you act as if you did not know it? If
we wish to cure ourselves of oppression and war, we have a right to
attack them by all the means possible--all!--the principle of inheritance
and the cult of the fatherland."

"No, we haven't the right," exclaimed the old man, who had risen in
great agitation and threw a look at his interlocutor that was hard,
almost savage.

"We have the right!" cried the other.

All at once, the grey head drooped, and the old man said in a low
voice:

"Yes, it is true, we have the right. I remember one day during the
war. We were standing beside a dying man. No one knew who he was. He
had been found in the debris of a bombarded ambulance--whether bombarded
purposely or not, the result was the same. His face had been mutilated
beyond recognition. All you could tell was that he belonged to one or
other of the two armies. He moaned and groaned and sobbed and shrieked
and invented the most appalling cries. We listened to the sounds that
he made in his agony, trying to find one word, the faintest accent,
that would at least indicate his nationality. No use. Not a single
intelligible sound from that something like a face quivering on the
stretcher. We looked and listened, until he fell silent. When he was
dead and we stopped trembling, I had a flash of comprehension. I
understood. I understood in the depths of my being that man is more
closely knit to man than to his vague compatriots.

"Yes, we have a right to attack oppression and war, we have a right to.
I saw the truth several times afterward again, but I am an old man, and
I haven't the strength to stick to it."

"My dear sir," said the young man, rising, with respect in his voice.
E