the Krupp's factories were turning out
thousands of big guns all the time we were asleep. Now we are paying the
price for it.'

'The same old tale,' he laughed, 'big guns, explosives, millions of men.'

'It must be the same old tale,' I replied. 'This is a war of exhaustion,
and the nations which can hold out longest will win.'

'Then where does God come in?' he asked.

I was silent. For one thing, I did not wish to enter into a religious
argument, and for another I scarcely knew what to say.

'You know those words in the Bible, Luscombe,--"Some trust in horsemen,
some in chariots, but we will trust in the strength of the Lord our God."
How much are we trusting in God?'

'It seems to me,' I replied, 'that God gives the victory to the biggest
and best equipped armies.'

'That's blank materialism, blank atheism!' he cried almost passionately.
'We don't give God a chance, that is why we haven't won the war before
now.'

I laughed good-humouredly, for even yet the mental attitude he had taken
up seemed to me almost absurd.

'I see what you are thinking, but I tell you what,--the materialism of
the country is adding to this frightful welter of blood, to this ghastly
holocaust. The destinies of men and nations are not decided primarily by
big guns, or mighty armies, and until we, as a nation, get back to a
realization of the necessity of God, the war will drag on. As I told you
before, when I was up at Ypres, I was convinced that if big armies, and
big guns, and poison gas shells, could have won the war, Germany would
have won long ago. But she was fighting the devil's battle, she was
trusting in "reeking tube and iron shard,"--as Rudyard Kipling puts it.
That is why she failed. With such a cause as ours, and with such heroism
as our men have displayed, we should, if we had claimed the help of
Almighty God, have won long since.'

'Nonsense, my dear chap.'

'Look here,' he cried, 'on what, in your opinion, do we depend for
victory?'

I was silent for a few seconds before replying.

'On the mobilization of all our Empire's forces,' I replied, 'on steady,
persevering courage, and on the righteousness of our cause.'

'But supposing our cause hadn't been righteous, what then?'

I saw what was in his mind, but I did not feel like yielding to him.
'It's no use talking this high-falutin stuff, Edgecumbe,' I said. 'We
are at war, and war means in these days, at all events, big guns. It
means the utilization