“It will be terrible,” she said. “It will last longer than you say. Every nation will be drawn into it. There will be no voice left to speak for reason. Every day we shall grow more brutalized, more pitiless. It will degrade us, crush the soul out of us. Blood and iron! It will become our God too: the God of all the world. You say we are going into it with clean hands, this time. How long will they keep clean? The people who only live for making money: how long do you think they will remain silent? What has been all the talk of the last ten years but of capturing German trade. We shall be told that we owe it to our dead to make a profit out of them; that otherwise they will have died in vain. Who will care for the people but to use them for killing one another—to hound them on like dogs. In every country nothing but greed and hatred will be preached. Horrible men and women will write to the papers crying out for more blood, more cruelty. Everything that can make for anger and revenge will be screamed from every newspaper. Every plea for humanity will be jeered at as ‘sickly sentimentality.’ Every man and woman who remembers the ideals with which we started will be shrieked at as a traitor. The people who are doing well out of it, they will get hold of the Press, appeal to the passions of the mob. Nobody else will be allowed to speak. It always has been so in war. It always will be. This will be no exception merely because it’s bigger. Every country will be given over to savagery. There will be no appeal against it. The whole world will sink back into the beast.” She must have walked mechanically. Looking up she found herself in her own street. And as she reached her doorway the tears came suddenly.!

There was only one hope that he could see: and that was to switch the people’s mind on to some other excitement. His advices from London told him that a parliamentary crisis was pending. Could not Mrs. Denton and her party do something to hasten it? He, on his side, would consult with the Socialist leaders, who might have something to suggest. She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and when not.

“How do you mean ‘in his way’?” demanded Joan. It certainly, if Froude was to be trusted, could not have been the orthodox way. The little room looked very cosy when Mary had made up the fire and lighted the lamp. She seated Joan in the worn horsehair easy-chair; out of which one had to be careful one did not slip on to the floor; and spread her handsome shawl over the back of the dilapidated sofa. “It’s the syndicates that have done it,” was a Mrs. Elliot’s opinion. She wrote “Society Notes” for a Labour weekly. “When one man owned a paper he wanted it to express his views. A company is only out for profit. Your modern newspaper is just a shop. It’s only purpose is to attract customers. Look at the Methodist Herald, owned by the same syndicate of Jews that runs the Racing News. They work it as far as possible with the same staff.”