of all the material forces at our command.'

'Then you believe more in a big army, and in what they call our
unconquerable Navy, than in Almighty God? Do you believe in God at all,
Luscombe?'

'Of course I do,' I replied; 'I am no atheist. All the same, it is our
Navy which has saved us.'

'Admiral Beatty doesn't believe that,' he replied, 'and if any man knows
what a navy can do, he does. Your position is identical with that of the
Germans. Why, man, if God Almighty hadn't been very patient with us, we
should have been beaten long ago. Germany's materialism, Germany's
atheism, German devilry has been our salvation as a nation. If the logic
of big guns had been conclusive, we should have been annihilated. That
chap Rudyard Kipling saw a long way into the truth.'

'When? Where?' I asked.

'When he wrote that _Recessional_:

Far-famed, our navies melt away,
On dune and headland sinks the fire,
Lo, all the pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.
God of the nations, spare us yet!
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

'And mind you, Kipling is a believer in force, and a believer in the
utilization of all the Empire's resources; but he sees that these things
are not enough. Why, man, humanly speaking, we stand on the brink of a
volcano.'

'Nonsense,' I replied.

'Is it nonsense? Suppose, for example, that the Germans do what they
threaten, and extend their submarine menace? Suppose they sink all
merchant vessels, and thus destroy our food supplies? Where should we be
then? Or suppose another thing: suppose Russia were to negotiate a
separate peace, and free all the German and Austrian armies in the East,
which I think is quite probable--should we be able to hold them up?'

'Do you fear these things?' I asked.

'I fear sometimes lest, as a nation, because we have forgotten God to
such an extent, He has an awful lesson to teach us. In spite of more
than two years of carnage and misery, we still put our trust in the
things which are seen.'

'How do you know?' I replied. 'Aren't you judging on insufficient
evidence?'

'Perhaps I am,' he answered. 'As you said some time ago, I know very
little about England or English life, but I am going to study it.'

'How?' I asked with a laugh.

'As far as I can see, I shall be some months in England,' he went on,
'and as it happens, my brigade is situated near London. And London is
the centre of the British Empire; it is at the hear