all
your fine sentiments the go-by?'

'And if I had?' he said with a smile. 'Should you be sorry or glad?'

I was silent. As I have stated I had not agreed with him, and yet I
should have been sorry had he become like many another of his class.

'I see,' and he laughed gaily. 'No, old man, I've given nothing the
go-by. No doubt, I overstated things a bit. No wonder. I saw things
only in the light of the present. But in the main I was right.'

'Then what do you mean by saying that your outlook was narrow and
silly?'

'I mean this. I looked on life without being able to compare it with
what it was before the war. When I went with you through London, and
saw the things I saw, when I saw the basest passions pandered to, when
I saw vice walking openly, and not ashamed, I said, "God is keeping
victory from us because we are not fit for it." In a sense I believe
it still. Admiral Beatty was right. "Just so long as England remains
in a state of religious indifference, just so long will the war
continue. When the nation, the Empire comes to God with humility and
with prayer on her lips, then we can begin to count the days towards
the end." And that's right. The nation itself, by its lack of faith
in God, by its materialism, by its want of prayer, by its greed, and
its sin, has kept victory from coming. I tell you the great need of
the age is prophets, men of God, calling us to God.'

'And do you stand by what you said about drink?'

'To every word. That phase of our national life has been and is
horrible. While vested interests in this devilish thing remain
paramount, we are partly paralysed. You see, it is the parent of a
great part of the crime of the country. Oh, yes, I stand by that. All
the same I was wrong.'

'Why wrong?'

'Because I did not look deep enough. Because I was not able to see the
tremendous change that has been wrought.'

'I don't understand,' I said.

'It's this way. You, because the change which has come over the land
has come slowly and subtly, have hardly been able to see it. But when,
a few weeks ago, my memory came back to me, I realized a sort of shock.
I saw how tremendous the change was, and is. A few years ago I was
home for a long leave, and I went a good deal into society. What did I
see? I saw that the women of England were in the main a mass of
useless, purposeless butterflies. I saw that the great mass of the
young men of our class were mere empty-headed