know how the name of `pacifist' stinks
in the nostrils. I know how far we are committed as a nation to a peace
won by force of arms. I know how our British blood boils at the thought
of leaving a foreign country with as many military advantages as Germany
has acquired. But I feel, too, that there is the other side. I have
brought you evidence that it is not the German nation against whom we
fight, man against man, human being against human being. It is my belief
that autocracy and the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns will crumble into
ruin as a result of today's negotiations, just as surely as though we
sacrificed God knows how many more lives to achieve a greater measure of
military triumph."

The Prime Minister rang the bell.

"You are an honest man, Julian Orden," he said, "and a decent emissary.
You will reply that we take the twenty-four hours for reflection. That
means that we shall meet at nine o'clock to-morrow evening."

He held out his hand in farewell, an action which somehow sent Julian
away a happier man.

CHAPTER XVII

Julian, on, the morning following his visit to the Prime Minister, was
afflicted with a curious and persistent unrest. He travelled down to
the Temple land found Miles Furley in a room hung with tobacco smoke and
redolent of a late night.

"Miles," Julian declared, as the two men shook hands, "I can't rest."

"I am in the same fix," Furley admitted. "I sat here till four o'clock.
Phineas Cross came around, and half-a-dozen of the others. I felt I must
talk to them, I must keep on hammering it out. We're right, Julian. We
must be right!"

"It's a ghastly responsibility. I wonder what history will have to say."

"That's the worst of it," Furley groaned. "They'll have a bird's-eye
view of the whole affair, those people who write our requiem or our
eulogy. You noticed the Press this morning? They're all hinting at some
great move in the West. It's about in the clubs. Why, I even heard last
night that we were in Ostend. It's all a rig, of course. Stenson wants
to gain time."

"Who opened these negotiations with Freistner?" Julian asked.

"Fenn. He met him at the Geneva Conference, the year before the war.
I met him, too, but I didn't see so much of him. He's a fine fellow,
Julian--as unlike the typical German as any man you ever met."

"He's honest, I suppose?"

"As the day itself," was the confident reply. "He has been in prison
twice, you know, for plain speaking. He is the