nd of her own or the
League's position about Japan's attack on China: too much (in
proportion) about Italy in Abyssinia. "If the League of Nations
really were an impartial judicial authority; and if (what is about as
probable) I were one of the judges; and if the Abyssinian Case were
brought before me, I should decide instantly against Italy. I have
again and again in this place stated in the strongest words the
particular case against Italy." He was against Italy in Abyssinia as
he had been against England in South Africa. But "I should not be
bound to rejoice at the Prussians riding into Paris because it might
prevent the British riding into Pretoria."

"Tragic dooms of separation" on public issues were not the only
trouble with _G.K.'s Weekly:_ the staff were also engaged in violent
personal quarrels about which Gilbert was asked to take sides--was
even bitterly reproached by one for supposedly favouring another. It
would be hard today to say what it was all about, but two of the
contestants have told me since that had they had the least notion how
ill he was getting they would have died rather than so distress him.
For it was a real and a very deep distress.

It may be remembered that Miss Dunham noted how Gilbert used to make
a mysterious sign in the air as he lit his cigar. That sign, says
Dorothy, was the sign of the cross. Long ago he had written of human
life as something not grey and drab but shot through with strong and
even violent colours that took the pattern of the Cross. He saw the
Cross signed by God on the trees as their branches spread to right
and left: he saw it signed by man as he shaped a paling or a door
post. The habit grew upon him of making it constantly: in the air
with his match, as he lit his cigar, over a cup of coffee. As he
entered a room he would make on the door the sign of our Redemption.
No, we must never pity him even when his life was pressed upon by
that sign which stands for joy through pain.

Those nearest to him grew anxious quite early in 1936. He was
overtired and working with the weary insistence that over-fatigue can
bring. The remedy so often successful of a trip to the continent was
tried. They went to Lourdes and Lisieux and he seemed better and sang
a good deal in his tuneless voice as Dorothy drove them through the
lanes of France. From Lisieux he wrote a pencilled letter, long and
almost illegible "under the shadow of the shrine"--trying to
reconcile the disputant