do I." Curled up in the corner of the sofa, I had not intended
to speak. A woman's opinions on war don't interest men. "The
fundamental instinct in man to fight may require a few thousand more
years to yield to the advisability of settling differences around a
table in a council-chamber, but one can't tell. Much less time may
be necessary. The tree-dwellers and the cave-dwellers and the
tent-dwellers spent most of their time scrapping. We do have
intervals of peace in which to get ready to fight again."

"So did they, though their intervals were shorter, perhaps, owing to
their simpler methods of attack." Selwyn laughed. "In their day,
warfare being largely a personal or tribal affair, little time was
necessary for preparation. With us the whole machinery of government
is needed to murder and maim and devastate and ruin. Civilization
and science and education have complicated pretty hopelessly the
adjustments of disputes, the taking of territory, and the acceptance
of opposing ideals. The biggest artillery and the best brains for
butchery at present are having their day. Humanity in the making has
its discouraging side."

"It has!" David Guard's voice was emphatic, though he, too, laughed.
"If humanity made claim to being a finished product, there'd be
justification for more than discouragement. It makes no such claim.
Fists and clubs, and slingshots and battle-axes, are handier weapons
than guns and cannon, and armored air-ships and under-sea craft, but
in the days of the former using, but one kind of army was sent out to
fight. To-day we send out two."

"Two?" Selwyn looked puzzled. "What two?"

"One to undo, as far as possible, the work of the other. The second
army, not the first, is the test of humanity's advance; the army that
tries to keep life in the man the other army has tried to kill, to
give back what has been taken away, to help what has been hurt, to
feed what has been starved, to clothe what is made naked, to build up
what has been broken down. Each country that to-day gives fight,
equips and trains and sends out two contrasting armies. They work
together, but with opposing purposes. The second army--"

"Has a good many women in it. But it's so stupid, so wicked and
wasteful, to fight over things that are rarely finally settled by
fighting. It's bad business!" My hands twisted shiveringly in my
lap. "Do you suppose the time will ever come when man will see it's
the animal's