ncing
pleasure boat and saw the huge misshapen iron monsters towering over us,
minatory, terrible. We swept in and out, across the sharp bows, under
the gloomy sterns of the ships of the first line. Ascher gazed at them.
His eyes were full of sorrow, sorrow and a patient resignation.

"Your protection," I said. "Because those ships are there, because
they are black and strong, stronger than any other ships, because men
everywhere are afraid of them, because this navy of England's is great,
your net of commerce and credit can trawl across the world and gather
wealth."

"Protection," said Ascher. "Protection and menace. This Navy is only one
of the world's guarantees of peace, of peace guaranteed by fear. It is
there as you say, and the German Army is there; that men may fear them
and peace be thus made sure. But can peace be secured through fear? Will
not these navies and armies some day fulfil the end of their being, rend
all our nets as they rush across the seas and desolate the lands? They
are more menace than protection."

Gorman was standing with his back to us. His elbows were resting on the
slide of the roof above the steps which led to the cabin. His chin was
on his hands and he was staring at the ships. Suddenly he turned.

"The world's great delusion," he said. "Hypnotised by the governing
classes the workers are everywhere bearing intolerable burdens in order
to provide statesmen and kings with these dangerous toys. Men toil, and
the fruits of their toil are taken from them to be squandered on vast
engines whose sole use is to destroy utterly in one awful moment what we
have spent the painful effort of ages in building up."

He swept his hand out towards the great ship under whose shadow we were
passing.

"Was there ever plainer proof," he said, "that men are mad?"

Miss Gibson sat beside me. While Ascher spoke and while Gorman spoke,
she held my glasses in her hand and watched the ships through them.
She neither heard nor heeded the things they said. At last she laid
the glasses on my knee and began to recite Kipling's "Recessional." She
spoke low at first. Gradually her voice grew stronger, and a note of
passion, tense and restrained, came into it. She is more than a charming
woman. She has a great actress' capacity for emotion.

We moved through waters consecrate, and she expressed for us the spirit
which hovered over them. Here English guns raked the ships of Spain.
Here, staggering homewards, sho