"do men go to war?"

"Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another," she replied calmly.
"In 1760, for example----" The shouts outside drowned her words. "Again
in 1797--in 1804--It was the Austrians in 1866--1870 was the
Franco-Prussian--In 1900 on the other hand----"

"But it's now 1914!" we cut her short.

"Ah, I don't know what they're going to war for now," she admitted.

* * * * *

The war was over and peace was in process of being signed, when I once
more found myself with Castalia in the room where our meetings used to
be held. We began idly turning over the pages of our old minute books.
"Queer," I mused, "to see what we were thinking five years ago." "We are
agreed," Castalia quoted, reading over my shoulder, "that it is the
object of life to produce good people and good books." We made no
comment upon _that_. "A good man is at any rate honest, passionate and
unworldly." "What a woman's language!" I observed. "Oh, dear," cried
Castalia, pushing the book away from her, "what fools we were! It was
all Poll's father's fault," she went on. "I believe he did it on
purpose--that ridiculous will, I mean, forcing Poll to read all the
books in the London Library. If we hadn't learnt to read," she said
bitterly, "we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and
that I believe was the happiest life after all. I know what you're going
to say about war," she checked me, "and the horror of bearing children
to see them killed, but our mothers did it, and their mothers, and their
mothers before them. And _they_ didn't complain. They couldn't read.
I've done my best," she sighed, "to prevent my little girl from learning
to read, but what's the use? I caught Ann only yesterday with a
newspaper in her hand and she was beginning to ask me if it was 'true.'
Next she'll ask me whether Mr. Lloyd George is a good man, then whether
Mr. Arnold Bennett is a good novelist, and finally whether I believe in
God. How can I bring my daughter up to believe in nothing?" she
demanded.

"Surely you could teach her to believe that a man's intellect is, and
always will be, fundamentally superior to a woman's?" I suggested. She
brightened at this and began to turn over our old minutes again. "Yes,"
she said, "think of their discoveries, their mathematics, their science,
their philosophy, their scholarship----" and then she began to laugh, "I
shall never forget old Hobkin and the hairpin," she said,